Always hyphenate body copy

Hyphenation is a software feature that splits words too long to fit at the end of one line. The first syllable, or syllables, appear at the end of the first line, and the remaining syllables are moved to the second line.

Hyphenation is equally important for text set both justified (lines of equal length, with varying word spacing) and flush-left/ragged-right (lines of differing lengths, with consistent word spacing).

If you fail to hyphenate paragraphs of justified, word spacing in lines containing a few long words will be noticeably large. Word spacing in lines containing several short words will be noticeably cramped.

Failure to hyphenate flush-left/ragged-right text results in lines of distractingly different length. Often, a line containing several short words will be very long, followed by a very short line containing a few long words.