Cut an object with the knife without adding new segment?

Question

If I use the knife to cut across a closed object, it creates two closed objects. What I would LIKE is to cut the object and have two open objects touching at the points of the cut. E.g., if I cut a square in half, I want two brackets touching at their ends. Obviously, I can go in and delete the added extraneous segments, but it adds extra steps. Thus far, I have not found any way to turn that off, or to toggle it, or anything. I DID do a search in the Adobe support help files and couldn't find anything -- which probably means that every article that mentions the knife has that exact info in billposter type right at the top of the article ; it's the way these things usually run with me...! <ruefulGrin>
Am I missing something simple?
(For the sake of completeness, I'm using Illustrator CC 2014.0.0 on OS X Mavericks.)

Answer 1

Thanks, Jacob. That certainly will work; unfortunately, it's just not as quick and precise as Option-dragging the knife to get a straight cut across an object or, more importantly, across multiple objects.
Ah, well -- when they finally replaced my old G5 at work last year, I knew it was going to mean giving up Freehand and learning the Adobe way of doing things. After predominantly doing illustrations in Freehand since the Aldus days, though -- somewhere around 25 years ago, now -- it's difficult having to learn a whole new set of reflexes!