How to prevent LaTeX from hyphenating words containing a dash?

Question

I would like to globally prevent LaTeX from hyphenating 'Objective-C'. I am aware of the \hyphenation command, but I don't see how I can make use of it. If I pass 'Objective-C' to this command, the dash will be treated as a hint to hyphenate the word there.

One solution I found is wrapping Objective-C into an mbox each time I use it. However, the document I am writing contains this name a lot, and wrapping it into an mbox each time is ugly (as is defining a command and using this over and over again in the source code).

Recommend asking on http://tex.stackexchange.com/ – Matthew Rankin Jan 04 '11 at 15:33 — Matthew Rankin, Jan 04 '11 at 15:33

score 9 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 04 '11 at 14:54

9

Why is defining a new command ugly? It's how \LaTeX\ defines itself.

\def\ObjectiveC{\mbox{Objective-C}}

answered Jan 04 '11 at 14:54

Spacedman

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Thanks! I guess there really is no other way, unfortunately. – BVC Jan 05 '11 at 16:04

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 04 '11 at 15:27

3

Use \nobreakdash. That's what LyX produces when I insert a nonbreakingdash and convert it to tex.

answered Jan 04 '11 at 15:27

user562374

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 04 '11 at 15:01

2

As suggested here, you could define a command like this:

 \newcommand\dash{\nobreakdash-\hspace{0pt}}

and use it like this

Consider the $n$\dash dimensional manifold ...

Also, you could use the babel package and use "~ as a protected hyphen. I'm not sure if using babel is advisable when writing in english, though.

answered Jan 04 '11 at 15:01

David

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Thanks for your suggestions! All of that works, but can not be defined globally, like the \mbox solution :( – BVC Jan 05 '11 at 16:03

How to prevent LaTeX from hyphenating words containing a dash?

3 Answers3