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Facharbeit: Hyphenation and typography

This page was translated from German with AI. It has not been checked by a native speaker. Original page in German

Justified text without gaps, abbreviations and numbers that are not torn apart, the right dashes and German quotation marks: that is how your Facharbeit looks clean. You set most of it once, and autocorrect does the rest.
📄 Open worksheet (PDF, German) 📝 Übungsdatei (.odt) 📝 Übungsdatei (.docx)

The video

In the video you see LibreOffice in the browser. For the spaces, formatting marks are switched on: every space appears as a small dot.

Subtitles are available in ten languages. Choose them at the bottom right of the video.

Contents of the video

  1. 0:00 What it is about
  2. 0:16 Checking the language
  3. 0:41 Hyphenation
  4. 1:35 Non-breaking space
  5. 2:19 Dashes and quotation marks
  6. 2:59 Summary

The most important points

Hyphenation and spell checking depend on the language of the text. It is shown at the bottom in the status bar and must be German (Germany) (Deutsch (Deutschland)).

With hyphenation long words are split at the end of the line, and the gaps in the justified text get smaller.
With hyphenation long words are split at the end of the line, and the gaps in the justified text get smaller.

Non-breaking space: Ctrl+Shift+Space

It joins two words that must not be separated at the end of a line: S. 112 (p. 112), z. B. (e.g.), 50 g, 10 %, Abb. 3 (Fig. 3). In LaTeX you write a tilde for it: S.~112. Degrees of angle stand directly after the number: 10°.

A non-breaking space also belongs between “z.” and “B.”. With formatting marks switched on you recognise it by the grey field.
A non-breaking space also belongs between “z.” and “B.”. With formatting marks switched on you recognise it by the grey field.

Dash (–) instead of hyphen (-): type space, hyphen, space and keep writing – autocorrect turns it into the long dash. For page ranges like 45–47 it stands without spaces; type two hyphens for that. Quotation marks are set by the program itself in the German style („…“) when the language is right.

Straight typewriter characters typed again: „Wie genau …?“
Straight typewriter characters typed again: „Wie genau …?“

The worksheet

Here you can see the worksheet for the video (in German). If there is a practice file, you download it above and work in your own word processor. The hints are printed upside down – turn the sheet only when you cannot get on by yourself. You can also open it as a PDF.

📄 Open worksheet (PDF, German)

The worksheet – Page 1
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The worksheet – Page 2
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The worksheet – Page 3
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The worksheet – Page 4
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Show the worksheet solutions
The worksheet – Page 5
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Try it yourself

Task

In which of these cases does a non-breaking space belong? a) S. 12 · b) 5 kg · c) im Jahr 2027 · d) z. B. · e) 30 ° (angle)

Show solution

a), b) and d). In c) it is an ordinary space. In e) no space belongs there at all: 30°.

Keep learning with a language model

You are my teacher and help me with my Facharbeit. I am learning typography in the word processor: non-breaking space, dash and hyphen, German quotation marks, hyphenation. Give me five short sentences, one after the other, with something typographically wrong in them, and let me find the mistakes. Wait for my answer and then explain briefly.

How this was made: The idea and the choice of topics are mine. A language model (LLM) drafted the script, the sample paper, the tasks and this page following my instructions. The screen recordings were made automatically by a script in LibreOffice (in the browser, with Collabora Online), which checked after every step that the setting was really saved. The voice was generated with Qwen3-TTS, modelled on my own voice.

The sample paper about the thread pendulum is invented, and so are the person “Alex Beispiel” and the two sources in the bibliography.

The videos, worksheets, practice files, texts and prompts in this series are licensed under CC BY 4.0: you may use, change and share them if you name the source.