[Tex/LaTex] Reliability of LaTeX hyphenation

hyphenationieee-stylelanguages

  1. I'm not native English.
  2. I have to write an academic paper with LaTeX, in US English, without mistakes.

My problem is with hyphenation. I do not know whether it is done correctly.

I use:

  • MikTeX.
  • \hyphenation{mon-i-tor-ing sub-se-quently pro-vi-sion-ally
    Smart-Road-Sen-se}
    for the words that I know that the hyphenation is
    wrong.
  • LanguageTool C:\Program
    Files\LanguageTool-2.8\languagetool.jar
    (in TeXstudio).

And now the question: there is a tool to control (and improve) hyphenation in LaTeX, without looking at all the words in the PDF?

Best Answer

TeX hyphenation is quite reliable, in general. However, some words can slip off its mechanism, because hyphenation is based on patterns. In order to be sure as much as possible of getting correct hyphenation in US English, load ushyphex.tex. See Where can I find a list of English hyphenation exceptions?

If I try the simple document

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}
\parbox{0pt}{\hspace{0pt}%
  monitoring
  subsequently
  provisionally
  SmartRoadSense
}
\end{document}

so that words are split as much as possible, I get

enter image description here

If I add (in the preamble)

\input{ushyphex}
\hyphenation{Smart-Road-Sense}

I get

enter image description here

Note that “Sense” should not by hyphenated even if \righthyphenmin is less than its default value 3, because the final “e” is mute and so can't form a syllable center.


Final word

Add \input{ushyphex} just to be very sure. Add explicit hyphenation only for “nonstandard words”.