[net.nlang] Hyphenation

alan@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Alan Algustyniak) (05/23/84)

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Here's a letter to Datamation magazine of a few years ago.
I thought that you'd enjoy it.


LOOK IT UP

At a time of increasing interest in dictionaries as office automation tools,
for hyphenation and spelling checks, I have observed an odd anomaly in
hyphenation as decreed by Webster's (Merriam) dictionary. It is this:
	- All words ending in TIONARY are hyphenated as TION-ARY, except
	DICTIO-NARY.
	- All words ending in NATION are hyphenated as NA-TION, except
	HYPHEN-ATION.

Now I am aware of the horrible inconsistency of hyphenation as it is
practiced, but there seems to be very long odds against this combination.
Do any DATAMATION readers know the reason?

				Bob Bemer
				Phoenix, Arizona


...AND MERRIAM RESPONDS

In the division of both 'dictionary' and 'hyphenation', the etymology, or
word history, is relevant. A division is shown after the 'n' in
'hy-phen-ation' because the word is formed from the English word 'hyphen'
plus the suffix '-ation.'  Similar divisions can be found in our
dictionaries for 'alienation', 'margination', oxygenation', and
'pollenation.'  On the other hand, 'dictionary' is not formed from the
English word 'diction' plus '-ary'; it comes fron the Latin 'dicionarium'
which is itself formed from 'dictio' "speaking, style" plus an '-n-'
(found in many Latin nouns ending in '-io' when a suffix or inflection
is added) plus the noun suffix '-arium.' Thus we feel that our division
of the entry 'dic-tio-nary' feflects its Latin origin more clearly than
would a division after the 'n' and it also adheres to the rather
complicated set of principles we apply to the entire vocabulary of our
current dictionaries. It is cases like these, by the way, which make it
difficult to teach a computer to divide words both consistently and
sensibly.

				John K. Bollard
				G.&.C. Merriam Co.
				Springfield, Massachusetts