Hyphenation tool for German, Finnish, French, Spanish and English
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Paste a word, a headline or a paragraph, pick the language, and the tool marks every point where each word may be broken at the end of a line. For German and Finnish it also marks likely compound boundaries, the best place to break a long word. You can copy the result with hyphens or as HTML with soft hyphens (­). It is free and needs no login.
How it works
- Break points come from TeX hyphenation patterns for each language: German (reformed spelling), Finnish, French, Spanish and US English. These are the same patterns ContentImage uses to set headlines on images.
- For German and Finnish a small lexicon of common compound parts marks the compound boundaries. A boundary is only shown where the patterns also allow a break.
- Words shorter than four letters are left whole. Nothing you paste is stored.
Examples
| Word | Break points |
|---|---|
| Bundesverfassungsgerichtsentscheidung | Bun-des-ver-fas-sungs-ge-richts-ent-schei-dung |
| Rechtschreibung | Recht-schrei-bung |
| Yhteistoimintaneuvottelut | Yh-teis-toi-min-ta-neu-vot-te-lut |
| työmarkkinatuki | työ-mark-ki-na-tu-ki |
| hyphenation | hy-phen-ation |
| typesetting | type-set-ting |
| constitutionnellement | consti-tu-tion-nel-le-ment |
| extraordinariamente | ex-tra-or-di-na-ria-men-te |
Output of this tool. Bold marks in the tool show compound boundaries.
When you need it
- Headlines on social and featured images. An image renderer has no CSS hyphens: auto, so long German and Finnish words either overflow or force a tiny font. See why hyphenation matters in headlines.
- Narrow layouts in HTML email or apps where CSS hyphenation is missing or unreliable. Paste the HTML version with ­ and the browser breaks only where you allowed it.
- Checking a single word you are unsure about in a language you do not write every day.
Limits
Patterns do not know what a word means. They can propose a break that is allowed but reads badly, and for loanwords where the rules allow two splits they show one. The tool can also skip a valid break inside a run of vowels. Every point it marks is a place where a line may break.
Rules in the language's own words: the German Amtliches Regelwerk (sections 84 to 90) and the Finnish Kielitoimiston ohjepankki. The tool in German is at Silbentrennung online, in Finnish at Tavutus netissä.
ContentImage sets every article headline this way on its featured and OG image. Free during the beta.
Get started freeFAQ
- What is the soft hyphen (­)?
- An invisible character that marks where a word may break. The browser shows a hyphen there only when the word actually wraps at that point.
- Does CSS hyphens: auto make this unnecessary?
- On a web page with the lang attribute set, often yes. It does not help in images, in many email clients, or where the browser has no dictionary for the language.
- Which English does it use?
- US English patterns. British hyphenation differs for some words.