Post by Tony the Ice ManPost by lentulaxI'm afraid the page you link to exhibits exactly the confusion I warned
against in the post I sent a minute ago ! You do NOT necessarily
record : syllables re/cord ; hyphenated (if you must) rec-ord
Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition
6.44 Most words should be divided according to pronunciation (the American
system, reflected in Webster), not according to derivation (the British
democ-racy (not demo-cracy)
knowl-edge (not know-ledge)
aurif-erous (not auri-ferous)
antip-odes (still better antip-des, not anit-podes)
Consequently, words such as the following, in which the second "syllable"
aimed helped spelled
climbed passed vexed
Nor are word endings...
[it continues]
You're quite right , of course , to point out that foreigners need to know
that the American and British systems of hyphenation are different in the
way you describe (allowing for the fact that derivation , though the first
principle , isn't the only consideration in the British system) .
My point was that reference to 'syllables' is confusing , as is talk about
'written' and 'spoken' syllables ; if 'written syllables' are the parts
into which when necessary a word may be divided by a hyphen , then to say
that a hyphen is placed between syllables is merely tautologous , unless by
'syllable' you mean 'spoken syllable' - in which case it is unhelpful and
often simply wrong , at least in Brit English . So , when you say the
Americans divide according to pronunciation , does that mean the same as
'according to the spoken syllables' (syllabification) or not ? If so , can
you explain the American system of syllabification (i.e. dividing words into
phonetic syllables ) . In the UK , for example , the words you quote would
be syllabified thus : an-ti-po-des /au-ri-fe-rous / re-cord (whether noun or
verb) , climbed etc. (That is , in simplified terms , a syllable is a
vowel-sound (ie non-mute) with one or more consonants attached ; initial
consonants go with the succeeding vowel ; single consonants between vowels
go with the following vowel ; two consonants between vowels split between
the preceding and following vowel) .Obviously in British English hyphenation
based on the meaning-units which make up a word will often naturally
coincide with syllabification , but in many cases that isn't the case , and
therefore any reference to 'dividing according to syllable divisions' is at
best unhelpful and unnecessary and at worst simply wrong . Presumably ,
either you in America have a different way of dividing words into (phonetic)
syllables , so that in 'antipodes' the
'p' is heard as the coda of the second syllable and not the onset of the
third , or it is also true for you that syllabification is not a guide to
hyphenation (antip-odes) .
Both the American and the British systems of hyphenation have the same aim ,
to facilitate prediction , and I certainly wouldn't want to suggest one is
better than the other - I dare say they're coming closer anyway . I just
think that any account of hyphenation systems which uses 'syllables' as a
criterion for placing of the hyphen is simply muddying the waters for
non-native speakers .
Mike