Hey everyone, I’m trying to figure out something for my Google Docs. Does anyone know if it’s possible to add German or English hyphenation to Google Docs? I’m thinking of something like what you see in Microsoft Word or LaTeX with Babel hyphenation.
I’m not great with Google Apps Script, so I’m wondering if someone could help me out. Is there a way to create an add-on or script that would do this? It would be super helpful for my documents.
If anyone has experience with this or knows how to approach it, I’d really appreciate some guidance. Maybe there’s a simple script we could use as a starting point? Thanks in advance for any help!
I’ve actually tackled this issue before in my work. While Google Docs doesn’t offer native hyphenation, I found a workaround that might help. I created a simple Google Apps Script that uses regular expressions to insert soft hyphens at appropriate breakpoints. It’s not perfect, but it does a decent job for most German and English text.
The script basically loops through your document, identifies potential hyphenation points based on common syllable patterns, and inserts soft hyphens. You’ll need to tweak it for different languages, but it’s a good starting point.
If you’re interested, I could share the basic script structure. Just keep in mind it might need some fine-tuning depending on your specific needs. It’s definitely saved me a lot of time compared to manual hyphenation!
Unfortunately, automatic hyphenation isn’t a native feature in Google Docs. I’ve explored this issue extensively for my own work. While there are some workarounds, they’re not ideal. One option is to use a third-party tool to hyphenate your text before pasting it into Docs, but this can be cumbersome. Another approach is to manually insert soft hyphens (Ctrl+Shift±), though this is time-consuming for longer documents. As for scripting a solution, it’s theoretically possible but would require advanced knowledge of Google Apps Script and linguistic rules. Your best bet might be to periodically check the Google Workspace Marketplace for new add-ons that could address this need.
hey noah! i’ve been lookin for something like this too. as far as i know, google docs doesn’t have built-in hyphenation like word does 
there might be some add-ons out there, but i haven’t found any good ones yet. maybe someone else here knows more? fingers crossed for a solution!