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Is there any special rules for hyphenating proper nouns? I've seen information like "never split a proper noun", but in numerous scientific papers these words are hyphenated.

Jason Bassford
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Mila Kalinina
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    Could you provide an example? – Xanne May 11 '20 at 08:22
  • for example, in journal "Conservation letters" the word "European" is spliited:

    "Our analysis of trade into the United States and the Euro- pean Union identified taxon-products for which seizures rep-resented a substantial";

    also name of order of fishes:

    One exception was caviar (from Acipenser- iformes), which was retained given the product importanceand interchangeability

     – Mila Kalinina May 11 '20 at 09:26
  • Are you talking about hyphenation? – Lawrence May 11 '20 at 09:27
  • yes, you are right, thank you – Mila Kalinina May 11 '20 at 09:34
  • It depends in the individual publisher's style guide, rather than rules of grammar. I looked up 'hyphenation at end of line' and found various sets of rules, several of which do indeed say 'don't divide proper names'. (BTW, the past tense of split is split.) – Kate Bunting May 11 '20 at 12:17
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    Does this answer your question? What are the rules for splitting words at the end of a line? – Jason Bassford May 11 '20 at 14:50
  • Maybe you mean a word processor or publisher that broke words at end and showed continuation with the dash. That is not ideal, but it is not the same as deliberately hyphenating those words. Clumsy computer. – Yosef Baskin May 11 '20 at 15:24
  • @KateBunting thank you very much! (and for "split" too, I'm sorry). It's strange for me because in Russian hyphenation rules are strict, and to my knowledge, all publishers must obey them. – Mila Kalinina May 11 '20 at 17:04
  • @JasonBassford thank you, I've seen this question and read all answers. Unfortunately, there's no mention about proper nouns. – Mila Kalinina May 11 '20 at 17:11
  • @YosefBaskin yes, but when I connected with editor and asked him about numerous hypenations (including proper nouns), He told me that it is correct, and in English proper nouns are hyphenated as well as common ones. But as the editor is nor native speaker I decided to ask here. Thank you! – Mila Kalinina May 11 '20 at 17:16
  • @MilaKalinina They would be treated the same way as regular words. If you have to hyphenate (not all style guides agree with hyphenation in the first place), you would do so following the same kind of rules with respect to syllables and word units. Note that rules of hyphenation can be very complex, and different people use different guidelines. It's possible to go to 50 different publishers and discover that each has their own specific set of rules. Unfortunately, there is no universal standard. It depends who you ask. (Either in general or when it comes to some particular exceptions.) – Jason Bassford May 11 '20 at 17:16
  • @JasonBassford thank you very much! It seems that the best way is to avoid hyphenation at all. – Mila Kalinina May 11 '20 at 17:20

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