Got it. Again, Ai won’t forcefully change OLD documents. Only new ones get affected.

Apologies, It seems to be working.
I have been working in some older documents lately and am likely noticing it ON from time to time in those. Which makes sense.

I am on a Mac, use 29.3.1. I just quit and reopened to be sure... it's all good.

thank you for looking into it. :)

Haley, Chris, can you locate and check your document profile files, to see if they have the hyphenate option enabled by default?
Have you ever modified any of these manually?
What versions are you using?

I feel like it was working correctly at some point but yes, I've noticed it defaults to hyphenating again.

I literally ALWAYS turn off hyphenate! It never works best for literally MOST CIRCUMSTANCES. Commenters below are saying that they implemented this, but my text boxes are still set to hyphenate by default... I'll see if this is a setting I can change.

Small step for a man giant leap for mankind! :D
six years - It's finally done!

Steve Jobs set the standard for typography in computing. Adobe did well but hyphenation as default is so last millennium. At last they have awakened and the graphic design world is at peace...

Hurray!

I will truly miss occasionally waking up to 11 new emails from people complaining about the hyphenate default. I think of you all every time I have to uncheck that stupid little box. We should be proud of ourselves for sticking to this issue for so long.

Godspeed everyone.

It ended a long time ago for people who bothered to learn what a New Document Profile is. Whatever.

I'm going to miss the angry comments that came in every few months. Our co-misery ends today 😔🎉

Finally!

OH. MY. GOD. I never thought I'd see the day! It actually WORKS! 😁😁😁😁🥳🎉🥳🎉
Are you (Adobe) going to announce this as a press release? Or maybe devote an entire festival to this update? You have just made GAZILLIONS of user very happy, after DECADES of misery!

UPDATE!
I'm not sure if this was a bad idea or brilliant.

Seeing as SOMEHOW I was able to get the Print.ai File keep Hyphenate OFF I opened Print.ai Changed the setting to be more "Web" - RGB, 1920x1080, Rulers pixel and Save that to my desktop as Web.ai.
I then replaced both Web.ai Presets. and it worked!

1. ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator ##/en_US/New Document Profiles/Web.ai
2. /Applications/Adobe Illustrator 2024/Support Files/New Document Profiles/en_US/Web.ai

Now if only someone from Adobe could do this for everyone else.

Other than those 3 main settings Colour, rulers and art board size is there something else I should be changing in this profile that i'm forgetting?

Kris, misconception or not. It's clear people are asking that Adobe set up illustrator for designers, not journalists. Not that it made sense in 1987, but we have InDesign for that now. They've had a decade to reevaluate their document profiles. Look at their customers needs and make adjustments. Remove the fluff, tweak this or that and be done.

Imagine if documents default Stroke setting was 10pt, default colour was a gradient, font was Times 20pt...etc.

Anyhow I have tried numerous times to FIX the hyphenation setting. Somehow, and Thankfully my Print.ai file seems to default to unchecked. But no matter what I do to save, save as, replace, delete, closed, open, custom, etc... the other files, Web, Mobile... hyphenate comes back.

Deleting all that "Cruft" is gone now :) so thats nice.

Side Note:
In the Paragraph Pallet there is a Reset Pallet butting the hamburger. Clicking that turns ON the check box. That said, if one can find and fix that, we might be in business.

I think it's a misconception that the reason why hyphenation is turned on by default is because, deep in the bowels of Illustrator’s source code, there is a 0 that should be a 1. The reason new documents have hyphenation turned is the same reason your Swatches, Graphic Styles, Symbols, and Brushes palettes are filled with a bunch of useless cruft: because Adobe set up the New Document Profile files that way. But you can change all that once and for all. Delete all the cruft from the tool palettes and turn off hyphenation, and your world will be so much happier.

Dina, a New Document Profile is not the same thing as the New Document dialog box. There is a folder on your system called New Document Profiles. In there is a set of Illustrator files that are the starting point for all your newly created documents, depending on which one you select from the pulldown menu in the New Document dialog box.

I think that turning off hyphenation alone is not enough of a change to register the document as being modified. So in addition to unchecking the box, draw a shape and delete it, so the little dot appears indicating the file has been modified. Then save the file and try again.

@Sonja and Rick Wallace, I opened the file named print.ai in the library, unchecked the hyphenate box in the paragraph palette, but a new document still came up as hyphenated.

@Kris, is there a check box in the new document dialog box? I did not find one, even under advanced settings. That would be handy.

For the record, I agree with earlier posters that there are times when hyphenation on is critical. However, if I'm working with a lot of type in a long document, I'm using InDe, where I'm working with styles and can set up the style for hyphenation or not. For AI docs, typically I don't want hyphenation.