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• • March 28, 2012 at 9:39 am #61894
    yan_vui

    Member

    Hello,

    I'm doing a research about the hyphenations in InDesign.
    I wonder how InDesign work with hyphenation, is it an algorithm, a dictionary or a combination of both?

    We had some troubles with a lot of bad hyphenations in an english book. (I'm not very good at English so I wasn't able to see the mistakes).
    Does InDesign often create bad hyphenations?

    Is it possible to export the base dictionnary of InDesign for modifying and improvement?
    Anyone knows where its located? Is there alternative dictionaries?

    Thanks in advance for your answer.

  • March 28, 2012 at 11:00 am #61896
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    Only Adobe knows for sure how it works, and they won't tell. If you really want to see how hyphenation works internally, you could download the Software Development Kit for InDesign and look at what options it has. However, it will not tell you how exactly the existing ones work — but it may give you some hints.

    It is probably a combination of an algorithm, a look-up list for syllables, and (always the last resort) a fixed table of common words that slip through the mazes of the algorithms. So there is no way to “get” a list of all possible words with their hyphenation points.

    I am curious, though, about your statement that ID makes lots of errors in hyphenation. I find that ID really does quite well in general, having encountered something like maybe a dozen-or-so words where it has problems with. In about every case that was with some arcane jargon as well. And of course English based hyphenation rules have problems with, for example, German philosphers (Wittgenstein comes to mind), as these names do not comply to standard rules for English.

    Usually when I suddenly see floods of hyphenation errors, it's a case of User Error: I assigned the wrong language to my text.

  • March 29, 2012 at 12:34 am #61898
    yan_vui

    Member

    Ok, thanks, it seemed to me that Adobe kept in “secret” their hyphenation method.
    We will talk with the proofreader of the book and analyse in details the documents to see if there was a mistake in ID.
    And then, we are going to find a way not to reproduce this kind of hyphenation problems.

  • March 29, 2012 at 12:44 am #61899
    Tim Hughes

    Member

    We deal with alot of text and rarely (I can't recall when the last problem was) have issues with hyphenation, I would tend to agree with Jongware about it being user error. The last time there was an issue I think it may have been with a German publishers file and the wrong dictionary being selected.

  • April 16, 2012 at 2:19 am #62006
    yan_vui

    Member

    The proofreader have sent us a document with some examples of good and bad hyphenations.
    She works with Essentials of Grammar (from page 132)

    Here's an example of InDesign bad hyphenation with default settings and the UK dictionnary:

    

  • April 16, 2012 at 7:16 am #62008
    David Goodrich

    Participant

    There is no substitute for knowing the hyphenation rules for a given language. In the case of English, it helps to know that rules differ between British English and US English.

    David

  • April 16, 2012 at 7:57 am #62009
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    Let's check those against dictionary.com (tiny disclaimer: this seems to be slightly biased towards US, not UK, English)

    sin~~cere~~~ly > sin·cere·ly

    ox~~~y~~gen > ox·y·gen

    sep~~~a~~rate > sep·a·rate

    in~~vin~~ci~~ble > in·vin·ci·ble

    un~~e~~~ven > un·e·ven

    … and this is from the online Help, on the use of tildes to indicate good/worse hyphenation points:

    “If you don’t like the hyphenation points, follow these guidelines to indicate your preferred hyphenation of the word:

    • Type one tilde (~) to indicate the best possible hyphenation points, or the only acceptable hyphenation point, in the word.

    • Type two tildes (~~) to indicate your second choice.

    • Type three tildes (~~~) to indicate a poor but acceptable hyphenation point.

    • If you want the word never to be hyphenated, type a tilde before its first letter.”

    So it would seem ID doesn't do too bad, and it's just a matter of personal preferences. Now those cannot be selected in ID's Preferences panel.

    By the way, if your proofreader objects against 2 first or 2 last characters before/after a breaking point, you should change that in your Hyphenation settings. Those are there for exactly this reason.

  • April 16, 2012 at 8:25 am #62011
    yan_vui

    Member

    Yeah the proofreader was really picky, unfortunately its not possible to set Indesign to choose only the best hyphenations (one tilde, or perhaps two tidles)

    Today hyphenation small mistakes are very common since the use of computers, so maybe it's not considered as mistakes anymore by lot of people. For me its just depend of the client, some really don't care at all.

    Thank you

  • April 16, 2012 at 8:47 am #62012
    David Goodrich

    Participant

    A proofreader's chief quality is being picky, and mindless hyphenation invites (nit-)picking. But as you say, for some jobs folks care, for others they don't. I notice bad hyphenation, and fortunately for me so do most of the folks I work with.

    David

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