Format hyphens, dashes, and quotation marks in Pages on iPad

By default, Pages moves words that don’t fit on a line of text to the next line. You can have Pages hyphenate those words instead as you type. You can adjust this setting for your entire document or for specific paragraphs. You can also add or remove hyphens for all existing text in your document, or just for individual paragraphs.

Pages automatically converts double hyphens (--) to dashes (—) and converts straight quotation marks to curly quotation marks as you type. You can turn this setting off or on at any time.

Note: The setting affects both hyphens and quotation marks—they’re both either off or on.

Change automatic hyphenation for a document

The hyphenation setting applies to the entire document, except to paragraphs where you specifically added or removed hyphens (see the next task). The setting affects only words that break at the end of a line, not hyphenated words you typed yourself.

Go to the Pages app on your iPad.
Open a document, then tap in the toolbar.
Tap Document Options, tap Document Setup, then turn Hyphenation on or off.

Add or remove hyphens in specific paragraphs

If you turn on automatic hyphenation for the entire document, you can turn off hyphenation for individual paragraphs. This setting affects only words that break at the end of a line; it doesn’t affect hyphenated words you typed yourself.

Go to the Pages app on your iPad.
Tap inside a paragraph or select multiple paragraphs.
Tap , tap , then turn Paragraph Hyphenation off or on.

This setting is available if hyphenation is turned on for the entire document, see Change automatic hyphenation for a document.

Turn automatic dash formatting off or on

You can turn off automatic formatting of dashes in the Settings app on your device. Changing the setting doesn’t affect existing hyphens and dashes in your document, only new text that you type.

Note: This setting applies to other apps on your device that you use to enter text.

Tap Settings on the Home Screen, then tap General.
Tap Keyboard, then tap Smart Punctuation.

Tip: To use different formatting for specific text, change the setting, type the text, then change the setting back.

Turn automatic quotation mark formatting off or on

You can turn off automatic formatting of quotation marks in the Settings app on your device. Changing the setting doesn’t affect existing quotation marks in your document, only new text that you type.