Avoid hyphenation in “2-D”

Question

How can I avoid hyphenation in words such as "2-D"? \hyphenation{} is not working since the dash is not a letter.

Answer 1

Write it inside a box, like this: \mbox{2-D}

Answer 2

To expand on Herbert's answer, here's a list of babel languages that support "~ for an unbreakable hyphen:

danish, dutch, german and ngerman, icelandic, norsk, swedish, bulgarian, slovak, russian and ukrainian.

Answer 3

\usepackage{xspace}
\newcommand\twoD{\mbox{2-D}\xspace}

\twoD and 2"~D ...: the latter with babel if the language supports "~

And an example with several languages and extended shorthands

\documentclass[french,english,ngerman]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\addto\extrasenglish{\languageshorthands{ngerman}}
\textwidth=5cm
\parindent=0pt

\begin{document}
\rule{\linewidth}{1pt}
\selectlanguage{english}

foo bar foo bar foo foobar and-another word

foo bar foo bar foo foobar and"~another word

\selectlanguage{french}
foo bar foo bar foo foobar and"~another word

\selectlanguage{english}\shorthandoff{"}
foo bar foo bar foo foobar and"~another word

\end{document}

Answer 4

With Xe(La)TeX, at least, you could also use the "non-breaking hyphen" (U+2011), given a font which contains the glyph.

Answer 5

If your editor supports Unicode and the font used by it includes the non-breaking hyphen (this is, e.g., the case for Emacs under current Debian Linux) you can try the following:

Load the inputenc or inputenx package:

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

Define a macro yielding a non-breaking hyphen, e.g.:

\newcommand*{\nobreakhyphen}{\mbox{-}}

or:

\newcommand*{\nobreakhyphen}{\nobreak\mbox{-}\nobreak\hskip0pt}

Bind the corresponding Unicode character to \nobreakhyphen:

\DeclareUnicodeCharacter{2011}{\nobreakhyphen}

Then, whenever you type the Unicode character U+2011 (using an adequate input method) you get a non-breaking hyphen, e.g.:

2‑D

Answer 6

Maybe this general method help.

First, define a macro who insert a non-breaking hyphen after some (math) stuff, but allowed hyphenation in the word after :

\usepackage{xspace}
\newcommand{\tiret}{\nobreakdash-\hspace{0pt}}

Then define the macro twoD :

\newcommand{\twoD}{\(2\)\tiret D\xspace}

the text-mode version works too :

\newcommand{\twoD}{2\tiret D\xspace}

The advantage of this method is if you want a hyphen follow by a long word, by ex. 2-cyclotetrabenzene.

P.S. I apologize for my poor english

Answer 7

Using XeLaTeX, and if you can input your non-breaking hyphen (U+2011) directly, the following elegant solution is available (courtesy of the XeTeX archives, post by Roland Kuhn, 2010.11.01):

The non-breaking hyphen can also be made active and defined to yield “\hbox{-}” (the box prevents the discretionary after the ASCII hyphen from escaping, \nobreak does not help here):

\catcode‑=\active
\def‑{\hbox{-}}

You put the above two lines in your preamble, and then in your source you simply use the non-breaking hyphen as needed. Working like a charm here (TeXShop+MacTeX 2011), with big thanks to Roland.

Servus, J