cting the weather.
ing the weather.
EXPLANATION If we begin a word at the end of a line and finish it on the next line, the hyphen cannot be placed just anywhere.
To avoid any confusion in the reader's mind, the best place to break a word is generally before a suffix (predict-ing), after a prefix (pre-dicting) or, if that cannot be achieved, between syllables (predic-ting). Thus, for our example predicting, there are only three hyphenating options; no other options are acceptable. Proper nouns (for example, people’s names) should not be hyphenated at all.
Below are the hyphenating options for some sample words. Work out why the first option is best and the last option is inappropriate.
| Best option | Second option | Inappropriate |
|---|---|---|
| harmon-ic | har-monic | harm-onic |
| wizard-ry | wiz-ardry | wizar-dry |
| accord-ing | accor-ding | acco-rding |
| freez-ing | (no second option) | free-zing |
| packag-ing | pack-aging | pac-kaging |
| co-incidence | coinci-dence | coin-cidence |
| sing-er | (no second option) | sin-ger |
| stock-iest | stocki-est | stoc-kiest |
| modern-ise | mod-ernise | moder-nise |
With modern word-processing programs, words automatically wrap to the next line if they do not fit. If the text is fully justified (lined up on the right-hand margin as well as the left-hand margin), the text spreads to fill the line, so nowadays many people hyphenate words only if a long word is pushed onto the next line because it is a couple of characters too long (so the words on the previous line look too spread out.)