[tex-hyphen] Word-division in British English

[Dominik Wujastyk]

 Dear Prof. Citron,

I am writing to you as Chair of the SfEP, because the SfEP is named as a
main contributor to the *New Oxford Spelling Dictionary *(2005, ISBN
978-0-19-956999-1).

In the 1991, as a member of the UK TeX Users Group, I collaborated with
colleagues in developing a set of word-division rules specifically for
British English, for use with the TeX typesetting software.  This software
is widely used, especially by authors and typesetters dealing with complex
documents.

The word-division rules were based on a list of about 150,000 hyphenated
words that was kindly shared with us by Andrew Rosenheim, then Director of
OUP's Electronic Publishing department, and Ruth Glynn, who also worked in
the same department.  The word division broadly mirrored those published in
Robert Allen's *Minidictionary of Spelling and Word Division *(1986 and
later eds.).

The UK TeX Users Group undertook not to share the original list of OUP's
hyphenated words, but only the compiled, machine-readable code used
internally by TeX.  The results were of great satisfaction to many British
authors and typesetters, and I believe produced goodwill on all sides.

I recently had the opportunity to study the *New Oxford Spelling Dictionary*,
and I see that many word-division points are different from those published
in the Allen *Minidictionary*, and also those given by the OUP-derived TeX
hyphenation algorithm.  Evidently, usage has evolved in the last two or
three decades, as one could expect.

The TeX community is now interested in updating TeX's British hyphenation
patterns to match those in the New Oxford Spelling Dictionary.  We would
like to contact someone at OUP who has the authority to discuss this matter
with us, and to offer a copyright release if it is deemed appropriate.

Can you help to put us in touch with the appropriate person?

With best wishes,
Dominik Wujastyk

and
Dr Phil Taylor (UK TeX Users Group custodian of the TeX British Hyphenation
project)

​
--
Professor Dominik Wujastyk <http://ualberta.academia.edu/DominikWujastyk>
​,​

Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
​,​

Department of History and Classics <http://historyandclassics.ualberta.ca/>
​,​
University of Alberta, Canada
​.​

South Asia at the U of A:

​sas.ualberta.ca​
​​
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