We write for the reader: Careful punctuation ensures that the writer's thoughts and concepts are clearly struc­tured and easy to read, and that his information and mes­sages are correctly reproduced.

Hyphenation lines create a harmonious text image in jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and ensure an effective reading flow. In the natu­ral­ly developped written language rule, they ensure that the correct accents of the words to be separated are preserved as far as possible.

The naturally-grown supra-regional written German (Schrift­deutsch) is based on a set of rules that is always self-renewing, which was deliberately smashed to rob the language of its expressiveness, to deform and de­stroy it. Thereby among other things many thousands of words were directly destroyed, words, in which the sepa­ration and compound spelling have completely dif­ferent meanings, although the conditions of language de­struction will not last in the long run. Proven regu­la­tions that had previously reformed in a natural way were de­clared “outdated”, whereas the highly deformed writ­ten language, which was deprived of its expressiveness and thrown far back in its development, was and is praised as “new” and “modern”. The “renewed” rules and hyphenation rules, however, lead to countless er­rors and misunderstandings, make it difficult to read texts, despite the fact that the underlying, self-contra­dic­tory “rules” have been formally implemented correctly in com­put­er programs (no programming errors). Thanks to free software, everyone is free to choose which hy­phena­tion rules and dictionaries they use, free software em­pha­sizes the freedom of the individual, the people and the nation. More information will be published in a sepa­rate article (until then a mini article with more gen­er­al aspects). a mini article with more general aspects [cur­rent­ly only in German]).

Classical written German will continue to be written, and the language packages associated with LibreOffice and Open­Office will also undergo ongoing maintenance, ex­pan­sion and updating. Extract from the official de­scrip­tion (11 March 2018), published on the “German (de-DE-1901) old spelling dictionaries” -project and -down­load page of the “Libre­Office Extensions & Templates”: “[...] This extension published by Karl Zeiler integrates dic­tion­aries in accordance with the old rules of German spelling and hyphenation. Classical spel­ling rules are still valid but do no longer apply to government agencies and schools where the new ones are mandatory. This ver­sion – derived from new spelling frami and igerman98 dictionaries – has been modified by Rüdiger Brün­ner according to the classical spelling rules. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he enlarged the word list by many scientific tech­ni­cal terms. [...]”.

Under LyX, select “Document”→ “Settings...” and select “Ger­man (old spelling)”. in the “Language” section.

LaTeX/LyX: General information on “german / ngerman” (in German).

The word separation systems of modern word pro­cess­ing and typesetting systems are powerful and work as er­ror-free as possible. However, it may happen that a type­set­ting system does not recognize a compound word as such or that a word protrudes beyond the edge, or that the author wishes for a different separation. For such cases you give clear guidelines.

Separation points can be set centrally in a separate ref­er­ence word list or directly in the text. The soft hyphen ex­plic­it­ly tells the typesetting system where a word can be hyphenated. One possibility, for example, is to copy it for larger texts via Crtl + C to the clipboard and then paste it via Crtl + V into the syllable or word joints.

Read the WP-article “Soft hyphen”. It contains detailed in­for­ma­tion for operating systems as well as for word pro­cess­ing and typesetting systems, the table in the section “Re­pre­sen­ta­tion on computer systems” contains an ex­ten­sive list of key combinations for different programs.

Some text components, such as hyperlinks or directory paths, can extend over several lines. To ensure that the source information is correct, you must prevent (non-exis­tent) hyphens from being inserted.

Use the Zero-width space to mark your word or text com­po­nent with hyphens that remain free of hyphens during wrap­ping. The hyphenation can be disabled for parts of a word as well as for the whole word. Read the following ar­ti­cles to familiarize yourself with the different scenarios:

Separation aids and optional predetermined breaking points increase reading comfort. However, an optional auto­mat­ic hyphenation feature either does not exist in to­day's Web page readers and e-book readers, or it does not work satisfactorily.

Partly the problem can be solved, so that at least the wide gaps disappear.

The browser program thus has enough syllable separation joints to avoid unattractive gaps. Certain hyphenation cases, such as the retransformation of the double con­so­nant (from “ck” to “kk”) in German, cannot be handled with this, so that no simple hyphenation option is available: In “Zuk-ker”, the short “u” is retained, but “Zu-cker” leads to a long, incorrectly emphasized “u”.

Some words urgently need to be separated, but must not be hyphenated as this would distort their content. Ex­am­ples are e-mail addresses and hyperlinks where it would no longer be clear whether it is a hyphen or a part of the ad­dress itself.

Here, the space character of the length zero helps: ​ (Zero Width Space). For URLs, it is best to in­sert it between each character of your word, if necessary.

While popular browsers take these separators into ac­count correctly, some e-book read­ers and e-book software readers either ignore the hyphenation help completely, or they bypass the problem by left justify, or they use the soft hy­phens separator, but do not display hyphens. Or worse, they display hyphens wherever hyphens are built in.

In general, at least a subset of the official Epub standard should be implemented bindingly on all e-book readers in or­der to guarantee a reliable text representation and a tidy read­ing comfort.