Divisions in print as guides to good pronunciation are condemned as needless manglings of language by many teachers who maintain that every word should be divided on syllables according to derivation or structure. Obeying this rule, geography and theology should be divided in the second syllable on the letter o, but in pronunciation these words are correctly emphasized and thereby practically divided on the g and l. In many dictionaries these words are hyphened geog-raphy and theol-ogy. The rules of the teachers are in opposition to those of dictionaries and to proper pronunciation.[1]
DIVISIONS ON SHORT SYLLABLES
Syllables of two letters have to take a division in a narrow measure, but terminations of words ending in -ly and -ed are not good in a broad measure when they appear at the beginning of new lines. Nor are in-, en-, on-, and de- wisely placed at the
- ↑ The usual rules for dividing [words into] syllables are not only arbitrary but false and absurd. They contradict the very definition of a syllable given by the authors themselves. ... A syllable in pronunciation is an indivisible thing; and strange as it may appear, what is indivisible in utterance, is divided in writing; when the very purpose of dividing words into syllables in writing, is to lead the learner to a just pronunciation. Webster, Improved Grammar, p. 156. Philosophical Grammar, p. 221.
Goold Brown adds these notes:
"... to show what is the pronunciation of a word, we must, if possible, divide into such syllabic sounds as will exaactly recompose the word, when put together again; as, or-thog-ra-phy, the-ol-o-gy. This being the most common purpose of syllabication, perhaps it would be well to give it a general preference, and adopt it when-
