Auto line-break words with exclamation point

[Llelan D.]

I have a document full of command words that all start with an exclamation point '!' like !INCLUDE.

When a command word needs to be wrapped, it is broken after the initial exclamation point instead of wrapping the unbroken word.

This only happens when the word needs to be wrapped and not elsewhere, so it doesn't seem to be an auto grammar thing. It seems to be involved with either hyphenation or just word-wrapping. The paragraph auto-hyphenation is not checked. I've also styled the word with a character style that has the language set to "None" to disable hyphenation for that style, but it still breaks after the initial exclamation point. I've also tried enabling auto-hyphenation in the paragraph style and designating a minimum of 2 characters before a break (the default) but it still breaks a command word after the single initial exclamation point.

I'd like it to stop, but I do not wish to turn off either word-wrapping or normal hyphenation. I saw a few web-searched snippets that state that hyphenation can occur after "special characters", but nothing on what those characters might be or how to either find out or configure it.

What I had expected was to be able to use a character style to turn off any auto-correcting hyphenation for a selection, but that does not seem to exist outside of eliminating the font language, and that does not work to stop this line-breaking.

Can anyone give me any clues as to what is going on here and how I can stop it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[JohnV]

An explanation point is a punctuation mark that normally terminates a sentence and is followed by a space and it appears that OOo assumes this is the proper treatment when it comes to word wrapping. Try a different set off character like an asterisk.

[Llelan D.]

I am documenting something that exists elsewhere. You can not change what character is used in a set of commands you are documenting simply because your word processor does not behave properly.

Also, no space is being added after the initial exclamation point. The command word is simply broken with a line break. If you place the cursor at the end of the break after the exclamation point and hit delete, the first character after the break is deleted and not any unseen space or the line break (unless the command word is now small enough to be unwrapped).

The question was: How do I alter this inappropriate behavior of OpenOffice so I can properly document these command words?

[floris_v]

One workaround is to insert a non-breaking space, and to set that to a very small font size and subscript or superscript to make it even smaller.
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[Llelan D.]