Hyphenation for “before you can say knife”
Showing how to split the syllables of “before you can say knife”.
What is the correct hyphenation for “before you can say knife”? The purpose of hyphenation is to separate a word such as "before you can say knife" because otherwise it would be too long and would no longer fit on one line. This separation not only saves space it improves the visually flow of the text. This word separation exists in most languages. In English, the word separation of “before you can say knife” is based on the speech syllables. The separating syllable in linguistics is therefore the smallest group of sounds in the natural flow of speech.
As a separator, the classic hyphen is usually used: „before you can say knife“ ⟶
„be-fore you can say knife“.
Hyphens are occasionally used to denote syllabification, as in syl-la-bi-fi-ca-tion. Various British and North American dictionaries use an interpunct, sometimes called a "middle dot" or "hyphenation point", for this purpose, as in syl·la·bi·fi·ca·tion. This allows the hyphen to be reserved only for places where a hard hyphen is intended (for example, self-con·scious, un·self-con·scious, long-stand·ing). Similarly, hyphens may be used to indicate how a word is being or should be spelled. For example, W-O-R-D spells "word".