Are there rules for splitting words?

Guest   Wed Jan 16, 2008 8:12 am GMT
Splitting English words/syllables at line ending is rather confusing to me.
For example, describe is splitted as de-scribe, not des-scribe.
pleasure is splitted as pleas-ure, not plea-sure.
recognition is splitted as rec-ognition, not re-cognition.
It seems obviously to me that the latter option makes better sense.
Anyone could explain this? Thanks!
furrykef   Wed Jan 16, 2008 7:50 pm GMT
<< For example, describe is splitted as de-scribe, not des-scribe. >>

Why should "describe" be split as "des-scribe"? It doesn't have two S'es in it. If you meant "des-cribe", that wouldn't make sense to me... the morpheme boundaries are obviously "de + scribe". The syllable boundaries are less clear, but the dictionary puts the "s" in the second syllable and that's the way that seems more natural to me when I say it.

My *guess* as to why pleasure was split as "pleas-ure" is that "plea" is also a word, and that has a different vowel sound, so it would be easy to misread it at first. It could also be that pleas- is seen as the root word and -ure as the suffix.

Not sure why "recognition" was split as "rec-ognition", particularly considering both the morpheme boundaries and syllable boundaries both clearly would split it at "re-". Perhaps it's because somebody thought splitting such a large word after only two letters would look strange.

I'm fairly sure that "plea-sure" and "re-cognition" would both be acceptible, although I'm far from an expert on this matter. Hyphenation rules aren't the sort of thing most native speakers really worry about.


By the way, the past participle of "split" is "split". I'll go ahead and correct your other mistakes as well.

<< It seems obviously to me >>

That should be "obvious", not "obviously".

<< Anyone could explain this? >>

I would say, "Could anyone explain this?"

- Kef
Guest   Thu Jan 17, 2008 12:51 am GMT
To furrykef ,
you are so helpful! Thank you so much!!!