Because I’ve been researching and copyediting for several decades, I sometimes get cocky and think I know everything there is to know about my craft and how to copyedit, and then POW, I discover something basic that I never imagined, and I’m amazed and humbled.

My most recent POW moment came as a result of a discussion I had with another editor on the magazine’s staff, who asked why Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary  breaks pe-tro-leum one way and pet-ro-chem-i-cal another, especially if in the pronunciation guide both words break after pe.

I had not a clue how to answer this question, and so sent an email off to the nice folk at Merriam-Webster’s Language Research Service. Within a few hours I received the thorough and polite explanation that follows.

“Thank you very much for writing to Merriam-Webster. The raised dots that appear in boldface entry words indicate possible end-of-line divisions, rather than syllable breaks. When we decide where to put these division dots, we take into account such things as morphology in addition to pronunciation. Syllable breaks are only shown within pronunciations. You’ll notice that the break between the first two syllables in ‘petroleum,’ ‘petrodollar,’ and ‘petrochemical’ is the same, even though the division dots appear in different places:

                                                pe• tro• leum \pə-'trō-lē-əm\
                                                pet• ro• chem• i• cal \'pe-trō-'ke-mi-kəl\
                                                pet• ro• dol• lar  \'pe-trō-'dä-lər\

With end-of-line divisions in general, there are acceptable alternatives, but we only show one set of possible divisions for each entry because we don’t have enough room to list them all. You can find more information about end-of-line divisions at http://merriam-webster.com/help/dictnotes/entries.htm (you’ll have to scroll down to get to the relevant section, which is about half-way down the page). You can find more information about syllable breaks in pronunciations in the section on hyphens at http://merriam-webster.com/help/pronguide.htm.”

As grateful as I am for this explanation, it still leaves unanswered my colleague’s question about which breaks to follow. Morphology? What does that mean? My fellow editor would deviate from Webster’s and break all three words after the pe, as they are pronounced.

If there are copyeditors reading this blog, I’d be interested to know what your guidelines are.

As to the word petrochemical in our manuscript, we’re going to recast the sentence or change the spacing to avoid breaking the word.

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