It consists of a vowel alone or accompanied by one or more consonants and separated by them, or by a pause, from a preceding or following vowel.

This division of words into syllables is indicated in dictionaries by the use of the hyphen thus: _sub-trac-tion_, _co-or-din-ate_.

It will be observed that in the first of these examples the vowels are all separated by consonants, while in the second two of them are separated by a pause only.
The English language has the further peculiarity of using _l_ and _n_ as vowels in syllabication, as in _middle_ (_mid-dl_) and _reck-on_ (_reck-n_).
The division of words into syllables for pronunciation is generally, but not always, the same as that which should be followed in case the word has to be divided typographically.

As these text-books are intended to help the apprentice as a speaker and writer of English as well as a printer, it is worth while to give some attention to syllabication for pronunciation before proceeding to discuss typographical division.[The illustrations from this point to the end of this section on page 16 are not typographic divisions.

They concern pronunciation only.] Two letters forming a diphthong or digraph are not to be separated.
_Coin-age_ (_oi_ diphthong) but _co-in-ci-dence_ (_oi_ not a diphthong).
_Excess_ (_ss_ digraph, pronounced practically like a single s) gives _ex-cess-es_, _ex-cess-ive_, etc.