066: Thou shall not hyphenate words of less than seven characters

Commentary Many designers are happy to hyphenate short words, but for me the minimum acceptable number of characters a word should contain before it can be hyphenated is seven. This in turn means a minimum of four characters before a hyphen and no fewer than three characters following a hyphenated line break. Fortunately, these parameters can be set within a paragraph style sheet at the beginning of a project to ensure the consistency of all body copy (see Rule #69). Why seven? It’s partly a visual thing, as I don’t believe two characters followed by a hyphen looks great, but it’s also an editorial consideration, as personally I don’t think words of five characters or less read cleanly when they’re hyphenated. Experienced readers store words as “sha....TS