Overview of special characters

To design a document professionally and to ensure that the output document is displayed properly, firesys provides you an overview of the most important typographic special characters in the “*Layout” menu ribbon.

An overview of special characters

En-dash

Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + “-” on the numeric keypad

An en-dash is longer than a hyphen; a space is inserted in front and after it. Screen display as an example: This text – a good example.

Non-breaking hyphen

Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + “-”

A non-breaking hyphen is used if a hyphenated term should not be split at the hyphen. Example: “EBIT margin”

Soft (discretionary) hyphen

Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + “–”

A soft or discretionary hyphen is set manually to specify a separation point within a word; if the word is not split, the hyphen remains invisible. Screen display as an example: Test¬word

Non-breaking space

Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Shift- + Space

A non-breaking space is used to prevent a line break e.g. between a number and a unit of currency: 251 ͜ million Euro; screen display as an example: Test word (for an additional explanation of the coupler, see About the coupler.)

Soft return

Keyboard shortcut: Shift- + Enter

A soft return begins a new line but not a new paragraph – in contrast to a paragraph break (¶) which you can insert with the Enter key.

	Good to know
	The paragraph marks (special characters) must be shown so that the screen display is visible.

See also

All formatting options in Word
The StyleGuide
Highlight text
Breaks in firesys
The page layout in firesys

Further contents

→ firesys website
→ Customer area
→ YouTube