> > But French would allow hyphenation of "commonplaces".
> Would it? Funnily yes, and this had me initially confused. Try: .hla fr .hpf hyphen.fr .hla en .hpf hyphen.us .sp .ev epigram .hla fr .rj 1 L'homme c'est rien\[em]l'\[oe]uvre c'est tout. .ev .sp My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. and the "problem" appears to go away: L'homme c'est rien--l'oeuvre c'est tout. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the common- places of existence. but it actually doesn't as you can see by using the following nonsense instead: .hla fr .hw commonp-laces .hla en .hpf hyphen.us .sp .ev epigram .hla fr .rj 1 L'homme c'est rien\[em]l'\[oe]uvre c'est tout. .ev .sp My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. which results in: L'homme c'est rien--l'oeuvre c'est tout. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonp- laces of existence.