MobileRead Forums - View Single Post

dcbrow2 · 07-28-2026, 07:47 PM

This post concerns a possible method to avoid hyphenation in the word thing ("th-ing").

I did a brief study on the format of the dictionary and while I'm not really clear in my mind about it, I can say that the numbers tell the software whether a given word location is a good place to put a hyphen (if needed) or a bad place to put a hyphen. Basically odd numbers favor hyphens (higher numbers are more favorable) and even numbers discourage hyphens (high numbers are more dis-favorable). Using this idea and the information here, I tested adding these 2 lines to the dictionary file provided by JSWolf (the English one):

t8h8i8n8g8
t8h8i8n8g8s8

I put those 2 lines near the top, above the first pattern (ie above the .a2 line). I believe this is basically tells the hyphenation engine to not hyphenation "thing" and "things".

I found a place in a book where "thing" was hyphenated as "th-ing" using a dictionary without those lines and was not hyphenated using a dictionary with those lines (no other changes between the two dictionaries). But it is not rigorously tested.

Also, thing is a challenging pattern of letters because "cloth-ing" is a valid hyphenation place but "th-ing" is not.

YMMV, but other in this thread reported seeing "th-ing" so I wanted to report my tests. Good luck!

If it's not clear, you have to unpack the dictionary so you can see the usr\local\kobo\hyphenDicts folder, edit the dictionary with a text editor and then repackage it to KoboRoot.tgz and drop it into the hidden .kobo folder on your device.

07-28-2026, 07:47 PM	#313
dcbrow2 Member Posts: 16 Karma: 10 Join Date: Mar 2026 Device: ipad mini	This post concerns a possible method to avoid hyphenation in the word thing ("th-ing"). I did a brief study on the format of the dictionary and while I'm not really clear in my mind about it, I can say that the numbers tell the software whether a given word location is a good place to put a hyphen (if needed) or a bad place to put a hyphen. Basically odd numbers favor hyphens (higher numbers are more favorable) and even numbers discourage hyphens (high numbers are more dis-favorable). Using this idea and the information here, I tested adding these 2 lines to the dictionary file provided by JSWolf (the English one): t8h8i8n8g8 t8h8i8n8g8s8 I put those 2 lines near the top, above the first pattern (ie above the .a2 line). I believe this is basically tells the hyphenation engine to not hyphenation "thing" and "things". I found a place in a book where "thing" was hyphenated as "th-ing" using a dictionary without those lines and was not hyphenated using a dictionary with those lines (no other changes between the two dictionaries). But it is not rigorously tested. Also, thing is a challenging pattern of letters because "cloth-ing" is a valid hyphenation place but "th-ing" is not. YMMV, but other in this thread reported seeing "th-ing" so I wanted to report my tests. Good luck! If it's not clear, you have to unpack the dictionary so you can see the usr\local\kobo\hyphenDicts folder, edit the dictionary with a text editor and then repackage it to KoboRoot.tgz and drop it into the hidden .kobo folder on your device.