Hyphenation for “fine kettle of fish”
Showing how to split the syllables of “fine kettle of fish”.
What is the correct hyphenation for “fine kettle of fish”? The purpose of hyphenation is to separate a word such as "fine kettle of fish" 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 “fine kettle of fish” 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: „fine kettle of fish“ ⟶
„fine ket-tle of fish“.
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".