Syllabication, also known as hyphenation, is the process of separating a word into syllables, whether spoken, written, or signed. It is necessary for pronouncing words correctly, and many children need help in learning it. Syllabication is based mostly on etymological or morphological principles in English, rather than phonetic ones, due to the weak correspondence between sounds and letters in the spelling of modern English.

There are some useful rules of thumb in syllabication, such as dividing a word into syllables at the end of a line in writing if it does not fit the line and if moving it to the next line would make the first line much shorter than the others. However, much of the understanding of syllabication comes from practice, time, and experience.

The main rules of syllabication include dividing a word into syllables at a pair of consonants, dividing a word before a single consonant between two vowels, and dividing a word before a single consonant at the end of a word.

Syllabication helps reinforce the correct pronunciation of words, and it teaches students to read unknown words, increases their sight-word vocabulary, and aids in learning how to spell words. Many Orton-Gillingham based programs introduce a number of syllabication rules or generalizations, and the Orton-Gillingham Online Academy’s Basic Language Course provides full details of these syllabication rules or generalizations, with lots of materials that will allow students to practice them.