Don’t Auto-Hyphenate Print Layouts When Featuring Websites

A note to all print publishers out there: if you’re doing a layout for an article that mentions URLs, don’t auto-hyphenate.

Hyphenated URL
from Bookwatch Vol. 11, Issue 2, page 26

Hyphenated text is a elegant feature of typesetting. Auto-hyphenated text is equally ingenious, but will break usability when a URL is longer than the space alloted to it. Unlike in web design, where a long string of text will brim over its containing element by default, print design is fixed and WYSIWYG.

The photo says it all. Try visiting http://virtual-blooms.com and you’ll get nothing. Try it without the hyphen and you’ll get what the article meant to say but auto-hyphenatedly ruined. Not that people who read print even care about the websites featured.

Turn off that auto-hyphenate in your layout software, whether it’s Word, Publisher, InDesign, or QuarkXPress.

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