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At which point can I make a line break in predesign?

Mari-Lou A
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Ahrtaler
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's not about the English language. – Lawrence Sep 28 '18 at 15:13
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    Oh I am sorry I always thought it is about the English language. What is it about? – Ahrtaler Sep 28 '18 at 15:21
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    The EL&U community is about English. However, your question seems to be about typesetting. It might help for you to elaborate on your question to clarify. You can use the [edit] link to do that. – Lawrence Sep 28 '18 at 15:24
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    I hope this might help. It would be best and logical to choose to place the hyphen after "pre-" in order to preserve the uninterrupted meaning of the original unsplit word. By contrast, hyphenating after "Prede-", and then placing "sign" on the next line, would confuse the meaning of the original word. – user22542 Sep 28 '18 at 15:55
  • I am voting to reopen this question, because it is about punctuation. – michael.hor257k Sep 28 '18 at 18:39
  • I agree—punctuation is quite relevant to English. – Jason Bassford Sep 28 '18 at 18:42
  • Related. – tchrist Nov 24 '23 at 01:42

1 Answers1

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The general rule is that words can be hyphenated at syllable boundaries. Many good dictionaries mark syllable boundaries to show you where words can be hyphenated 1.

Still, according to Merriam-Webster, predesign has only one division point at which a hyphen may be put at the end of a line:

pre·design

Which seems rather odd, given that design itself can be split as:

de·sign

Also redesign:

re·de·sign

See a more general discussion here.

michael.hor257k
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  • Merriam-Webster does not say it only has two syllables. If you look at the definition of words in that dictionary, the centered dot is used to delineate end-of-line word breaks not syllables: As it explains: "The centered dots within entry words indicate division points at which a hyphen may be put at the end of a line of print or writing." – Jason Bassford Sep 28 '18 at 16:04
  • @JasonBassford I believe the general rule is that words can be hyphenated at syllable boundaries. – michael.hor257k Sep 28 '18 at 16:15
  • Yes, that's true. But your statement that Merriam-Webster is indicating two syllables is false. It's not. It's indicating the end-of-line break. – Jason Bassford Sep 28 '18 at 16:18
  • @JasonBassford What would you call them, then (the two parts)? – michael.hor257k Sep 28 '18 at 16:19
  • You said in your answer that "according to Merriam-Webster, predesign has two syllables." That is not true. The dot used by the dictionary is only indicating an end-of-line division. In this case, the line break is between the first and second syllables (the word has three). Look at athe•ism. It has four syllables, but the centered dot shows the line break between the second and third syllables. – Jason Bassford Sep 28 '18 at 16:31
  • @JasonBassford Yes, you've said that already. I asked what should I call the two parts instead. – michael.hor257k Sep 28 '18 at 16:39
  • The word has three syllables. The part on the left of the dot, one syllable, is what goes at the end of the first line of text; the part on the right of the dot, two syllables, is what goes at the start of the second line of text. If you like, you can call each side a word division. – Jason Bassford Sep 28 '18 at 17:06
  • @JasonBassford Well, I am not sure the distinction matters in the given context, but I have edited my answer to satisfy the pedants. – michael.hor257k Sep 28 '18 at 17:30
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    I think the reason why Merriam Webster says it only has one hyphen-spot is because connecting pre - design is intuitive, as is de - sign. But seeing prede -sign is a bit jarring as one may interpret it as "prede-sign". Since "sign" is an actual word, one could be left asking what a prede-sign is. (Although de-sign, still, is easy to decipher when broken at the end of a line.) – Tommy Tran Sep 28 '18 at 18:33