Hyphenation for “mentally ill”
Showing how to split the syllables of “mentally ill”.
What is the correct hyphenation for “mentally ill”? The purpose of hyphenation is to separate a word such as "mentally ill" 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 “mentally ill” 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: „mentally ill“ ⟶
„men-tal-ly ill“.
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".