Re: Moraic codas [was Re: 'Yemls Morphology]

>We mostly leave it to trained editors and computer programs, neither
>of which is infallible.  How is a poor program to know that it's
>noth-ing, but ba-thing?  Furthermore, this is yet another of the points
>where British and American disagree: pro-duct vs. prod-uct, e.g.
Right. As a formal technical editor, I want to add that
editorial/typographic hyphenation rules are not meant to reflect what a
linguist would identify as syllable breaks, although they frequently
coincide of course. The editor's chief concern is readability, which means
avoid breaks that would cause confusion or distraction (noth-ing and
ba-thing are the way they are in part because "no" and "bath" are both
actual English words, which could cause the reader to misparse the
sentence, however briefly).


>Cheers, Tom



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Tom Tadfor Little            tom@telp.com
Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA)
Telperion Productions        www.telp.com
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