How does hyphenation work in TeX?
Everyone knows what hyphenation is: we see it in most books we read, and (if we’re alert) will spot occasional ridiculous mis-hyphenation (at one time, British newspapers were a fertile source). Hyphenation styles are culturally-determined, and the same language may be hyphenated differently in different countries — for example, British and American styles of hyphenation of English are very different. As a result, a typesetting system that is not restricted to a single language at a single locale needs to be able to change its hyphenation rules from time to time. TeX uses a pretty good system for hyphenation (originally designed by Frank Liang — you may view his Ph.D. thesis online), and while it’s capable of missing “sensible” hyphenation points, it seldom selects grossly wrong ones. The algorithm matches candidates for hyphenation against a set of “hyphenation patterns”.
