Adding Hyphens to Phrases

Evelyn is looking for a way to add hyphens to phrases that were originally typed in without the hyphens. For instance, if the phrase "we are having a bigger and better than ever sale this week" is typed in, Evelyn may want it to instead read "we are having a bigger-and-better-than-ever sale this week." The hyphens that denote the phrase need to replace all the spaces that were previously between the words in the phrase.

The quickest solution is to simply select the words in the phrase (bigger and better than ever) and use Find and Replace to replace all the spaces with dashes. Of course, this involves several steps, and if you face this scenario quite often, you should consider a macro to do the actual replacing. The following macro, for instance, will automate the task:

Sub MakePhrase()
    If Selection.Type <> wdSelectionIP Then
        Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
        Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
        With Selection.Find
            .Text = " "
            .Replacement.Text = "-"
            .Forward = True
            .Wrap = wdFindStop
            .Format = False
            .MatchCase = False
            .MatchWholeWord = False
            .MatchWildcards = False
            .MatchSoundsLike = False
            .MatchAllWordForms = False
        End With
        Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    End If
End Sub

The macro first checks to make sure that a selection has been made. If so, then all the spaces in the selection are replaced with dashes. To make the macro handier, simply assign it to a shortcut key. Then, when you need to hyphenate a phrase, simply select the words and press the shortcut key.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (9173) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Adding Hyphens to Phrases.