Hyphens

   The proof of the hyp-hen is in the reading.

   Hyphens may be the most misunderstood and misused punctuation marks in the language. And if we humans have trouble, what chance does a computer have? There are some basic rules for hyphenation, which are to be applied when justifying type and word breaks at the end of a line. Back in the day, people using typewriters and typesetters in composing rooms knew these rules, and applied them.
   The first rule was to break a word on a syllable. But how to define syllable, especially with compound words like newspaper? Another rule is, in a cluster of three consonants, hyphenate after the first consonant. But that can lead to this example: new-spaper.
   Saturday's New York Times (Aug. 11) perpetrated these two mis-breaks in the same issue: ultrar-ich; messa-ge.
   In the first example, the machine did not recognize the two components, ultra- and rich. In the second, the machine failed to use yet another old rule that disallowed a remnant of only two letters.
   What's needed is a better hyphe-nation progr-am to help compu-ters to justif-y their own exi-stence until they learn sem-antics and can apply the mea-nings of sy-llables when using hyp-hens.
   Until then, we'll need more proofreaders to look at the pages before they go to the presses.