An optional hyphen is listed under special characters in the "More section" of search and replace in Word 2003, but when I tried to replace that character with nothing, no optional hyphens were found. Lori ----- Original Message ----- From: Lori Castner To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 3:11 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Optional Hyphens As I recall, they ar added by the scanning program. They are just in the middle of words and the speech says "optional hyphen". I deleted a lot of emails because I thought a way to remove them all at once was in the manual, but I can't find it. I will just remove them one by one although it will certainly slow down my progress with the book. Lori ----- Original Message ----- From: Cindy To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 2:44 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Optional Hyphens Lori, I'm not sure what you mean by optional hyphens. Do you mean the hyphens that sometimes appear at the ends of lines? They are not optional, but are misplaced. If they are part of a word that is supposed to be hyphenated, they can stay at the end d f the line or if possible be put where they're suppose to be. If the word should not be hyphenated remove the hyphen and closeup the word. If the hyphen is at the end of the page, put the whole word on either that page or the next page. (not sure if I'm being clear;maybe someone else can explain better. Cindy Join us in celebrating our 10th Anniversary! TinyURL.com/752cyrs -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lori Castner <loralee.castner@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 1:03 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Optional Hyphens Hi, Everyone, I am proofreading a book that is loaded with optional hyphens. I believe that we are not required to remove them, but I would like to do so, but can't find instructions for doing so in the manual. Can anyone tell me the process for removing these hyphens? I'm going to be getting a new computer in several weeks but found this fairly short book I can complete proofreading before then, so hope I can remove these hyphens. Lori C.