syllabication n : forming or dividing words into syllables [syn: syllabification]

Syllabication \Syl*lab`i*ca"tion\, n. The act of forming syllables; the act or method of dividing words into syllables. See Guide to Pron., [sect]275.

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Syllabification is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken or written.

It is also used to describe the process of something like a consonant turning into a syllable, but this is not discussed here. For example, in North Central American English, "can" is normally pronounced /kən/, or even with the vowel reduced to a syllabification of the /n/ itself.

The written separation is usually marked by a hyphen (e.g., syl-la-ble). For presentation purposes, typographers may use an interpunct (Unicode character U+00B7, e.g., syl·la·ble), or special-purpose "hyphenation point" (U+2027, e.g., syl‧la‧ble).

At the end of a line, a word is separated in writing into parts conventionally called "syllables" if it does not fit and if moving it to the next line would make the first line much shorter than the others. This can be a particular problem with very long words. Word processing has automated the process of justification, making syllabification of shorter words often superfluous.

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