Home   |   TOPIC LIST   |   About   |   Contact

Dividing words at the end of a line

When you’re using a word processor on a computer, you do not need to worry about hyphens at the end of a line to split words over the two lines - if a word needs to be split, the software will just dump the whole word onto the next line instead. However, when you’re writing by hand, you may still need to split words over two lines. If possible, try to think about how long each word you write is going to be, and if it’s not going to fit, just put it on the next line.

If you do need to split a word at the end of a line, try to put the hyphen after a complete syllable or number of syllables:

If you need to split a word that is already hyphenated, just split it where the hyphen already is. Try to avoid leaving one or two letters of a word either at the end or the start of a line:

Dividing words at the end of a line

Split the words instead at a different syllable (or best of all, don’t split it at all):

Dividing words at the end of a line