Remove Optional Hyphens

This option removes discretionary hyphens from the document. Optional hyphens are not true hyphens, but typesetting tools used to indicate preferred breaks at the end of a line.

They are most often relics from content that has been copied and pasted from, e.g., PDF or online articles, and they should generally not be included in XML.

Soft Returns

Soft returns are line breaks that have been added (most likely) using the keyboard shortcut Shift + Enter. They force a line break but do not begin a new paragraph in Word, which can lead to problems during paragraph styling.

The two cleanup options in the drop-down menu are:

• convert the soft returns to spaces or hard returns or

• leave the soft returns as-is