What it means
Hyphenation is the end-of-line break inside a word, marked with a hyphen, that lets a typesetting engine fill a line evenly rather than leaving a gap. In justified text it is essential; in ragged-right text it is optional but still improves the rag.
Where a word may break is a matter of language and dictionary — typo-graphy in American style, ty-pog-ra-phy by syllable — and engines use either exception lists or hyphenation patterns, the language-specific rule sets that Franklin Liang devised for TeX in 1983 and that most modern software has since adopted.
House rules then limit the damage: no more than two or three hyphenated lines in a row; at least two letters before the hyphen and three after; no break in the last word of a paragraph or at the foot of a recto page; avoid breaking proper names, numbers and already-hyphenated compounds; and never split a word so that the first half reads as a different word.
In Bindery
Bindery typesets in LaTeX, which hyphenates with language-specific patterns — so a translated edition breaks words by that language’s rules.
Make the book, not the checklist
Describe a book or upload a manuscript. Bindery writes with you, typesets in LaTeX, sizes the spine from the real page count and produces printer-validated files — the watermarked proof is always free.
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