hyphen

hyphen

Demo page

This is a text hyphenation library, based on Franklin M. Liang's hyphenation algorithm. In core of the algorithm lies a set of hyphenation patterns. They are extracted from hand-hyphenated dictionaries. Patterns for this library were taken from ctan.org and ported to Javascript.

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/en";

(async () => {
  const text = "A certain king had a beautiful garden";

  const result = await hyphenate(text);
  // result is "A cer\u00ADtain king had a beau\u00ADti\u00ADful garden"
})();

Hyphenate HTML

HTML tags will automaticly skip hyphenation.

import { hyphenateHTML as hyphenate } from "hyphen/en";

(async () => {
  const text = "<blockquote>A certain king had a beautiful garden</blockquote>";

  const result = await hyphenate(text);
  // result is "<blockquote>A cer\u00ADtain king had a beau\u00ADti\u00ADful garden</blockquote>"
})();

Multilingual hyphenation

To hypehante text in any other supported language, just change the import source. For example for German language, import a hyphenation function from a "hyphen/de" source.

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/de";

(async () => {
  const text = "Ein gewisser König hatte einen wunderschönen Garten";

  const result = await hyphenate(text);
  // result is "Ein ge\u00ADwis\u00ADser Kö\u00ADnig hat\u00ADte einen wun\u00ADder\u00ADschö\u00ADnen Gar\u00ADten"
})();

It is possible to use many langauges on the same page.

import { hyphenate as hyphenateEn } from "hyphen/en";
import { hyphenate as hyphenateDe } from "hyphen/de";

(async () => {
  const english = "A certain king had a beautiful garden";

  const englishResult = await hyphenateEn(english);
  // result is "A cer\u00ADtain king had a beau\u00ADti\u00ADful garden"

  const deutch = "Ein gewisser König hatte einen wunderschönen Garten";

  const deutchResult = await hyphenateDe(deutch);
  // result is "Ein ge\u00ADwis\u00ADser Kö\u00ADnig hat\u00ADte einen wun\u00ADder\u00ADschö\u00ADnen Gar\u00ADten"
})();

Sync version

The hyphenate function returns a Promise, however a sync version of it returns a string.

import { hyphenateSync as hyphenate } from "hyphen/en";

const text = "A certain king had a beautiful garden";

const result = hyphenate(text);
// result is "A cer\u00ADtain king had a beau\u00ADti\u00ADful garden"

Install

npm install hyphen

Options

• debug

  A Boolean indicating, if script should output debug info to console. Default is false.

• hyphenChar

  A String sets a value of the soft hyphen character. Default value is \u00AD.

• minWordLength

  A Number sets the minimum length of the word, intended for hyphenation. Default value is 5.

Example of using options

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/en";

(async () => {
  const text = "A certain king had a beautiful garden";

  const result = await hyphenate(text, { hyphenChar: "-" });
  // result is "A cer-tain king had a beau-ti-ful garden"
})();

List of available languages

Check the list

• Afrikaans language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/af";

• Assamese language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/as";

• Belarusian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/be";

• Bulgarian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/bg";

• Bengali language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/bn";

• Catalan language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/ca";

• Coptic language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/cop";

• Czech language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/cs";

• Welsh language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/cy";

• Church Slavonic language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/cu";

• Danish language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/da";

• German, traditional spelling

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/de-1901";

• German, reformed spelling

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/de-1996";

• German, traditional Swiss spelling

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/de-CH-1901";

• Modern Greek, monotonic spelling

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/el-monoton";

• Modern Greek, polytonic spelling

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/el-polyton";

• English, British spelling language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/en-gb";

• English, American spelling language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/en-us";

• Spanish language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/es";

• Estonian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/et";

• Basque language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/eu";

• Finnish language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/fi";

• French language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/fr";

• Friulan language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/fur";

• Irish language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/ga";

• Galician language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/gl";

• Ancient Greek language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/grc";

• Gujarati language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/gu";

• Hindi language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/hi";

• Croatian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/hr";

• Upper Sorbian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/hsb";

• Hungarian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/hu";

• Armenian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/hy";

• Interlingua language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/ia";

• Bahasa Indonesia, Indonesian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/id";

• Icelandic language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/is";

• Italian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/it";

• Georgian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/ka";

• Kurmanji, Northern Kurdish language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/kmr";

• Kannada language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/kn";

• Classical Latin language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/la-x-classic";

• Liturgical Latin language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/la-x-liturgic";

• Latin language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/la";

• Lithuanian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/lt";

• Latvian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/lv";

• Malayalam language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/ml";

• Mongolian, Cyrillic script, alternative patterns

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/mn-cyrl-x-lmc";

• Mongolian, Cyrillic script

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/mn-cyrl";

• Marathi language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/mr";

• Multiple languages using the Ethiopic scripts

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/mul-ethi";

• Norwegian Bokmål, bokmål, norsk bokmål language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/nb";

• Dutch language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/nl";

• Norwegian Nynorsk, nynorsk language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/nn";

• Norwegian, norsk language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/no";

• Occitan language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/oc";

• Odia, Oriya language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/or";

• Panjabi, Punjabi language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/pa";

• Pāli language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/pi";

• Polish language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/pl";

• Piedmontese language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/pms";

• Portuguese language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/pt";

• Romansh language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/rm";

• Romanian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/ro";

• Russian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/ru";

• Sanskrit language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/sa";

• Serbocroatian, Cyrillic script

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/sh-cyrl";

• Serbocroatian, Latin script

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/sh-latn";

• Slovak language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/sk";

• Slovenian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/sl";

• Serbian, Cyrillic script

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/sr-cyrl";

• Swedish language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/sv";

• Tamil language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/ta";

• Telugu language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/te";

• Thai language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/th";

• Turkmen language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/tk";

• Turkish language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/tr";

• Ukrainian language

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/uk";

• Mandarin Chinese, pinyin transliteration

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/zh-latn-pinyin";

Aliases for specific languages

• Alias for hyphen/de-1996

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/de";

• Alias for hyphen/el-monoton

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/el";

• Alias for hyphen/en-us

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/en";

• Alias for hyphen/mul-ethi

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/ethi";

• Alias for hyphen/mn-cyrl

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/mn";

• Alias for hyphen/sh-cyrl

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/sh";

• Alias for hyphen/sr-cyrl

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/sr";

• Alias for hyphen/zh-latn-pinyin

import { hyphenate } from "hyphen/zh";

Factory function

Factory function can be used to create hyphenate function with changed default options.

import createHyphenator from "hyphen";
import patterns from "hyphen/patterns/en-us";

const hyphenate = createHyphenator(patterns, {
  // result in Promise
  async: true,
  // prevent HTML tags from hyphenation
  html: true,
  // minimum word length is 7
  minWordLength: 7
});

The following are predefined hyphenate functions.

import createHyphenator from "hyphen";
import patterns from "hyphen/patterns/en-us";

const hyphenate = createHyphenator(patterns, { async: true });
const hyphenateHTML = createHyphenator(patterns, { async: true, html: true });
const hyphenateHTMLSync = createHyphenator(patterns, { html: true });
const hyphenateSync = createHyphenator(patterns);

Predefined hyphenate functions are set in every language pack.

jsDelivr CDN for older websites

It is possible to use hyphen on older websites with jsDelivr network. Check the package page on their website.

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/hyphen/hyphen.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/hyphen/patterns/en-us.min.js"></script>

After the script is added on your page, use createHyphenator to create a hyphenate function.

var hyphenate = createHyphenator(hyphenationPatternsEnUs);

Alternatives

Check other great hyphenation libraries:

• Hyphenopoly does client-side hyphenation of HTML-Documents.
• Hypher A fast and small hyphenation engine.

Text hyphenation in CSS

The CSS hyphens property is intended to add hyphenation support to modern browsers without Javascript:

p {
  hyphens: auto;
}

It is part of the CSS Text Level 3 specification. The browser compatibility list can be found on the related MDN page.