Division of Words | Page 6

two syllables one of them receives more stress of voice than the other. This stress of voice is called accent. If the word consists of three or more syllables there is usually another syllable stressed in somewhat less degree. This is called a secondary accent. In some cases there may even be a third accent if the word is very long; _In'-come_, _val-e-tu'-di-na'-ri-an_. This fact arises from the tendency natural to all human speech to take more or less musical forms. The monotony of a series of stressed or of unstressed sounds would be unbearable. The pronunciation of such a series would be a highly artificial and very difficult performance. Correct pronunciation is very greatly concerned with the proper placing of the accent. Indeed the meaning of a familiar word may be quite obscured by a misplaced accent. For example, _he-red'-it-ary_ is a very familiar word, but when pronounced _he-red-it'-ary_, as it was habitually by a friend of the author, we have to stop and think before catching the meaning.
The placing of the accent in English is subject to two general rules.
I The accent clings to the syllable which gives the meaning to the word, or in technical terms, the root syllable, _re-call'_, _in-stall'_, _in-stal-la'-tion_ (accent falling on the syllable which defines the word as a noun), _in-her'-it_.
II Where the root syllable is not known the accent falls on the first syllable, with secondary accents following at intervals to relieve the voice.
This last tendency not infrequently supersedes the other, partly from the natural habit of the language, and partly because the average man is not an etymologist and knows very little about the derivation of the words he uses. For example, in Shakespeare's time English people followed the first rule and said _re-ven'-ue_, but now we say _rev'-e-nue_.
These two rules will serve as a good general guide to accent. Attention should be paid to the pronunciation of good speakers, and care taken to follow it. In case of doubt the dictionary should be consulted and the proper accent carefully fixed in the mind.

DIVISION OF WORDS
When the words do not fit the line what shall we do? The early printers used only one kind of spaces. In setting a line of type they proceeded until there was no room in the line for the next complete word of the copy. Then they filled out the line with spaces and began the next word on the next line. The length of the register being known in advance and nothing but spaces being used in setting the line, the compositor was spared much that makes composition at once a hard labor and a fine art. The result was an irregular margin at the right such as we now see in typewritten letters.
With improvements in types and typography the squaring out of the page soon came into fashion. In many cases this can be done by the careful use of spaces so as to bring a certain number of words squarely out to the end of the line. There have been printers who have insisted that this should always be done. Their efforts have not, however, been successful. They result in a freakish looking page with white spots in the lines where letters or words have been spaced out to fill the register. It would be better, on the whole, to resort to the practice of the old masters and leave the right-hand margin irregular.
Ordinarily the difficulty has been met by dividing words and putting a part of a word on one line and the rest of it on another, indicating the break by a hyphen. The hyphen in such a case is always the closing character in the first line. Clearly this division must be so made as to assist the reader in his task. The primary purpose of all printing is to be read. Anything that adds to the legibility of the printing improves it; anything that detracts from its legibility harms it. How can we so divide words that the legibility and intelligibility of the text will be maintained, the line justified to register, and the beauty of the page enhanced? These ends--legibility, intelligibility, and beauty--are the aims of all the rules which have been devised for the division of words. These are the things the reader will see and by them he will judge the results. He will probably know nothing about the rules by which the compositor gains his results. The compositor needs to know the rules, but to remember always that they are only means by which to secure results.
There have been several attempts to devise systems of division, but no one of them is thoroughly consistent or universally adopted.
One system requires the division of a word when the pronunciation will permit on the vowel at the end