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I've googled around and haven't found a single good resource on hyphenation rules in English that explain why, for instance, it's moth-er, but fa-ther. Or Lat-in but cre-tin etc. etc. Anyone with any advice?

Dylan Nicholson
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    What's your source for "moth-er" and "fa-ther" being the right hyphenations? – alphabet Jan 19 '24 at 04:12
  • That's the only way I've ever seen it done. m-w. com agrees. – Dylan Nicholson Jan 19 '24 at 08:27
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    It depends a lot on the vowel. What resources on hyphenation have you looked at? – Stuart F Jan 19 '24 at 09:41
  • Maybe you'll find this discussion helpful? https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/346709/which-syllable-does-a-consonant-belong-to – Quack E. Duck Jan 19 '24 at 17:55
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    @QuackE.Duck Not sure how helpful that is. It mentions a few general rules, but I don't think any of them would apply here. The consonant sound at the syllable boundary is the same, the only difference is the first syllable vowel. – Barmar Jan 19 '24 at 18:12
  • The difference is that mother has a "short vowel" while father has a "long vowel" (these are also called "lax" and "tense" vowels; neither name is particularly illumninating). – Peter Shor Jan 19 '24 at 21:24
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    I actually suspected it may be related to that, but I'm still looking for a resource that explains that that is actually the rule that determines how to hyphenate syllables. It certainly seems to be typically be the case that short-vowel syllables are hyphenated with the hyphen after the consonants but long-vowel syllables with the hyphen after the vowel, but like I said, I haven't found any resource confirming that as a general rule. The https://sarahsnippets.com/syllable-division-rules/ page is a good start, but some references to something a bit more "official" would be nice? – Dylan Nicholson Jan 20 '24 at 05:51

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