How to force LaTeX not to break the line after a hyphen “-”?

If you put it in a mbox, it can't get broken up:

\mbox{(re-)creation}

But that means it can't get broken up anywhere in the word!

Do not reinvent the wheel – there is a package for that

It is called the extdash package and adds multiple commands for new behaviour with dashes.

Important: load this package as the very last package (even after hyperref)

Add the shortcuts option: \usepackage[shortcuts]{extdash} if you want to use \-/ instead of \Hyphdash. More details at https://www.ctan.org/pkg/extdash.

You can then use new dashes to control breaking behaviour of words with dashes.

Standard LaTeX dashes

• - Standard LaTeX hyphen
• -- Standard LaTeX en-dash
• --- Standard LaTeX em-dash

extdash breakable dashes

Words hyphened with these dashes can also be broken at other positions than the dash

• \-/ hyphen
• \-- en-dash
• \--- em-dash

extdash unbreakable dashes

No line breaks possible at the hyphen

• \=/ hyphen
• \== en-dash
• \=== em-dash

Useful for expressions like $x$\=/axis or $x$\=/$y$\=/plane or your question ;)

The amsmath package provides the \nobreakdash command to insert before the relevant dash:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{amsmath}

\usepackage[width=1.5cm]{geometry}

\begin{document}

A (re\nobreakdash-)creation.

A (re-)creation.

\end{document}