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The New Oxford spelling dictionary by Maurice Waite from 2005 says on p. 521,

tech|nolo¦gies

Note there's no break after “techno” despite the Greek root téchnē. Why? Could we kindly ask for an explanation of the hyphenation here?

Note that The Oxford spelling dictionary by Robert Edward Allen from 1986 wrote on p. 261,

tech¦no|lo¦gies

The discrepancy is a mystery.

tchrist
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    We abbreviate "technology" to "tech" so the hyphenation seems natural there ("techno" is dance music). And the second part is an "ology", not a "logy", so it's more natural not to break the 'o' from it. – Weather Vane Nov 23 '23 at 20:23
  • @WeatherVane “Techno” as a music style is a rather late addition to the English language, isn't it? It probably shouldn't influence the hyphenation that much. Following the logic in your second sentence, we'd break the word as techn-ologies then, wouldn't we? –  Nov 23 '23 at 20:24
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    No, because your first part doesn't parse well. Breaking it as tech-nologies is how the word is said, so it is natural to place the hyphen there. If you reach the end of a line and see 'tech-' you know what it is. But if you see 'techn-' you'll think "what is techn" and it breaks the flow of comprehension, because the word isn't said like "teckon`ology". – Weather Vane Nov 23 '23 at 21:30
  • See this related question. You should be aware that algorithmic approaches to hyphenation sometimes yield infelicitous or surprising results. For example, the algorithm from the related question produces tech-nol-o-gy tech-nolo-gies tech-nol-o-gist techno-pho-bi-ac tech-nol-o-gizes tech-no-log-i-cal tech-nos-truc-ture tech-nol-o-giz-ing tech-no-log-i-cal-ly. Notice it's made one mistake. – tchrist Nov 23 '23 at 21:49
  • @tchrist In this particular question, we do NOT talk about algorithmically generated patterns. (For the reason, cf. the comments in https://ctan.org/tex-archive/language/hyphenation/ukhyphen.tex. It seems to me—though I might be wrong about this—that the aforementioned dictionary is a successor of an older dictionary from which the word list was taken and provided to Dominik Wujastyk, and the hyphenations produced by \usepackage[british]{babel} are estimated to be 10% wrong.) –  Nov 23 '23 at 23:02
  • @tchrist The book says tech|nol¦ogy, tech|nolo¦gist, techno|logic¦al, techno|struc¦ture, techno|logic|al¦ly. Seems to me that there's more than 1 error. Still, there might be some additional, implicitly understood hyphenations according to pages x and xi of the book. –  Nov 23 '23 at 23:16
  • @WeatherVane Yes, and if we considered the pronunciation only, we'd have to spell wri-ting instead of the standard writ-ing. Anyway, the book keeps the whole nolo together: if we argue that techn-ology sounds bad, this still leaves the possibility techno-logy. –  Nov 23 '23 at 23:21
  • @WeatherVane I checked an older OUP dictionary and updated the question. After consideration, I think you might be right on the influence of techno as the dancing-music style because I cannot imagine any other reason for the change over 19 years. Such a quick change in an otherwise very traditional Britain would seem strange, but it seems we have to live with it. Or account for the possibility of an error in at least one of the two dictionaries. –  Nov 23 '23 at 23:41
  • Probable duplicate of https://english.stackexchange.com/q/21529 or of https://english.stackexchange.com/q/385 or of countless questions with any number of fine answers on the topic from Peter Shor or Herrison and plenty more besides. – tchrist Nov 24 '23 at 02:09
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    @AlMa0 You've completely failed to catch on to the fact that "where you're coming from" does not mean what "where you come from" and "where you're from" mean. Instead it's asking what your covert position is, just exactly like asking "What's your angle?" would. You keep inventing misperceived insults out of thin air where none exist, and you refuse to tell us what you're really trying to get at, so we probably cannot help you here until you reveal this. – tchrist Nov 24 '23 at 16:20
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    @AlMa0 You say "I cannot imagine any other reason for the change over 19 years." Do you think that at any one point in time, there is only one correct way to hyphenate any given word. This isn't even close to true. Most words have only one reasonable hyphenation, but many have more than one. – Peter Shor Nov 24 '23 at 23:04
  • @PeterShor I mean a specific word in each question on hyphenation, and not generic reasons why hyphenations differ. –  Nov 24 '23 at 23:18
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    My point was that if a word is hyphenated differently in dictionaries written 20 years apart by two different authors, it does not mean that the hyphenation of the word in English has changed; it might just mean that the authors had different opinions about how to hyphenate it. – Peter Shor Nov 24 '23 at 23:33
  • @PeterShor Sure, this is also possible; no argument here. –  Nov 24 '23 at 23:56
  • @PeterShor There was also an intermediate thing between the two books: the second edition of The Oxford spelling dictionary by Maurice Waite, 1995. On p. 546 there, we see tech|nolo¦gies. The new team (most likely, the editor and the adviser on the word division) probably felt very strongly about the hyphenation of this word so that they changed it for the second edition. –  Nov 25 '23 at 01:38

1 Answers1

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I cannot go back and ask whoever came up with that hyphenation, but I can guess at their thought processes.

In your comment, you say

"The book says tech|nol¦ogy, tech|nolo¦gist, techno|logic¦al, techno|struc¦ture, techno|logic|al¦ly. Seems to me that there's more than 1 error."

Those are all correct. One of the general rules of hyphenation in English (occasionally broken when it conflicts with other rules of hyphenation) is that you cannot hyphenate after a short vowel in a stressed syllable.

The first "o" is pronounced /ɒ/ in technology, and technologist. Since /ɒ/ is a short vowel, these words are not hyphenated after the "o", and so are hyphenated after the "l". In technologically, technostructure, technological, the "o" is not in a stressed syllable, so these words are hyphenated after techno.

If you have a two-letter syllable, as in tech-no-struc-ture, there is probably no need to include a hyphenation point both before and after it, because two letters are so short. And hyphenating after techno- is clearly better than hyphenating after tech- in these cases, because the Greek prefix is from τέχνη, a word that includes the "n".

So the book is completely correct in this case. If you're looking for a reference (just judging from their treatment of this word), it's probably a good one, and you shouldn't second-guess it until you learn a lot more about the rules of English hyphenation.

It's possible that the 1986 Oxford Spelling Dictionary decided that in this case the rule about breaking at morpheme boundaries was more important than the rule about not breaking after a short syllable in technologies. That's a judgment call, but I personally would prefer to see technologies broken as tech-nologies rather than techno-logies (and techn-ologies is impossible because /kn/ never occurs at the end of a syllable in english).

Peter Shor
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