\
accent
primitive interrupt hyphenation.
Sets of hyphenation patterns are usually derived from analysis of
a list of valid hyphenations (the process of derivation, using a tool
called patgen, is not ordinarily a sport to be played by
ordinary mortals).
The patterns for the languages a TeX system is going to deal with
may only be loaded when the system is installed. To change the set of
hyphenation patterns recognised by a TeX-based or XeTeX system,
a partial reinstallation is necessary (note that
LuaTeX relaxes this constraint).
TeX provides two “user-level” commands for control of
hyphenation: \
language
(which selects a hyphenation style), and
\
hyphenation
(which gives explicit instructions to the hyphenation
engine, overriding the effect of the patterns).
The ordinary LaTeX user need not worry about \
language
, since
it is very thoroughly managed by the babel package; use of
\
hyphenation
is discussed in
the context of
hyphenation failure.
This answer last edited: 2011-06-06
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