The hyphenation algorithm used by wp-Typography is based on the 1983 Stanford Ph.D. thesis of professor Frank Liang: Word Hy-phen-a-tion by Com-puter. In this thesis, Dr. Liang also developed an English (United States) pattern file for use with his algorithm. Liang’s English pattern file was updated in 1991 by Peter Breitenlohner.
The resulting algorithm — with the English (United States) patterns — finds 90% of all allowed hyphenation points identified in the Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary with a 0% error rate. Patterns for many additional languages have been developed by others and vary in quality.
