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Where can I hyphenate (split at the end of the line; British English) the word porosimetry? Merriam-Webster and dictionary.com do not know the word at all and ushuaia hyphenates only at one position: porosi•metry (GB; for US English: porosime•try). I have seen poros•imetry printed, which is not in accordance with my pronunciation of the word, but possibly I got that wrong because I am no native speaker but an ELL. (Even for porosity I found different hyphenation patterns in different dictionaries.)

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    Thanks to the abundance of vowels, you could safely hyphenate it after either o, the i (as shown), the m (as shown), or even the e without confusing the reader in the least. It's not a word one uses in everyday speech, so it's doubtful anyone would challenge your publisher for breaking the word at any point that is needed for space that still makes sense. The so-called rules for hyphenation are somewhat, uhm, flexible in the history of English printing, to say the least. Follow a dictionary source for common words, but create your own preference(s) in this case.
    – Mark Hubbard
    Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 14:03
  • Also, read this entry on EL&U if you are interested in longer answers: english.stackexchange.com/questions/385/… The answer by @Peter Shor is especially useful. If Mr. Shor disagrees with my comment above, I'll take it down and defer to him.
    – Mark Hubbard
    Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 14:21
  • For what it's worth, even highly literate native speakers are likely to mispronounce this word and struggle with hyphenating it appropriately.
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Commented Aug 17, 2016 at 21:31
  • Merriam-Webster does know porosimeter though, which as @MarkHubbard has pointed out has a lot of possible places to hyphenate: merriam-webster.com/dictionary/porosimeter
    – ColleenV
    Commented Aug 17, 2016 at 22:03

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First, we need to figure out the pronunciation of porosimetry.

The pronunciation appears to be /pɔːrɒˈsɪmɪtri/, so the hyphenation is po-ro-sim-e-try, where we hyphenate after sim because the rule is to avoid hyphenating after a short vowel in a stressed syllable.

I know how to pronounce porosity /pɔːˈrɒsɪti/, so the hyphenation is po-ros-i-ty. Notice the disagreement with the hyphenation of porosimetry. This occurs because different syllables are stressed.

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Some possible hyphenation break points as per comments

po-rosimetry
poro-simetry
porosi-metry
porosim-etry
porosime-try

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