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

[Adrian Fronda]

Dear Barbara, dear Phil,

Thank you for your e-mails.
I have added
\selectlanguage{british}
in the root file before the inclusion of all files, but it did not help. No automatic hyphenating happens and no hypenating occurs when I use «\-».

Also when I follow Phil's remark and write
\hyphenation{im-pas-sive-ly} impassively 
the word «impassively» is not hyphenated as it should. 

Do you have any other ideas? As I said, ideally I would prefer to use «\-» to the more cumbersome \hyphenation{} command. 

Many thanks for your help so far,
Adrian



> On 20 Aug 2016, at 16:16, Barbara Beeton <bnb at ams.org> wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
>