[tex-hyphen] Why does "\-" not work?

[Barbara Beeton]

On Sat, 20 Aug 2016, Adrian Fronda wrote:

    Dear all,

    I apologise for being a beginner to LaTeX and asking a question which in the eyes of many might appear stupid. 

    Anyway, I need some help with hyphenating, and I think this is the best place for asking questions of that nature. 

without actual text to experiment with,
it's difficult to actually do anything.
however, i noticed one thing:  you have
specified british hyphenation with babel,
but you haven't chosen a language to use
in the processing.  the babel documentation
should tell you how to do that.  even so,
i'm a bit surprised that \- doesn't do
anything useful.

phil taylor has, in another message,
explained why \hyphenation{word} in the
text doesn't give the desired result.
					-- bb

    I have a root file containing the following:
    ???????????????????????????????????????????
    \documentclass[14pt, oneside, a4paper]{book}
    \includeonly{%
    Introduction2WelcomeToEssex,%
    WelcomeToEssex,%
    DiscoverMascara,%
    %Envy,%
    Wedlock,%
    %Future,%
    %Plenty,%
    StrayDog,%
    %Shame,%
    TheFrenchLady,%
    ThePregnantReceptionist,%
    Bliss,%
    ThePunter,%
    }
    \pagestyle{headings}
    
    \author{\href{mailto:Adrian at TransnationalRepublic.org}{Adrian\ Fisipojakene}}
    \title{Beletristics}
    \date{\today}
    
    \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
    \usepackage[german,british]{babel}
    \usepackage{cjhebrew}
    \usepackage{graphicx}
    
    \usepackage{url}
    \usepackage[authoryear,round,semicolon]{natbib}
    \makeindex
    
    \usepackage{makeidx}
    \usepackage{lmodern}
    \usepackage{textcomp}
    \usepackage{verbatim}
    
    \usepackage{fontenc}
    \usepackage[pdftex,unicode=true,%
    bookmarks,plainpages=false]{hyperref}
    
    \begin{document}
    \frontmatter
    \maketitle
    \include{Introduction2WelcomeToEssex}
    \include{Introduction2Sundry}
    
    \mainmatter
    
    \include{WelcomeToEssex}
    \include{DiscoverMascara}
    \include{Envy}
    \include{Wedlock}
    \include{Future}
    \include{Plenty}
    \include{StrayDog}
    \include{Shame}
    \include{TheFrenchLady}
    \include{ThePregnantReceptionist}
    \include{Bliss}
    \include{ThePunter}
    
    \backmatter
    \printindex
    \bibliographystyle{named}
    \bibliography{../../bibliographies/Beletristics.bib}
    \end{document}
    ???????????????????????????????????????????
    No hyphenation happens spontaneously in the included files. If I use ?\-?, again, no hyphenation happens where it should. If I use \hypenation{word} inline, then the whole word disappears. I'd very much prefer to be able to use ?\-?, but I would put up with any other solution. 
    
    Can anybody help?
    
    Many thanks
    Adrian