Really?! This is quite a revelation to me (that's "rev-e-la-tion" not "re-ve-la-tion") as I always thought hyphenation was fixed and not dependent on pronounciation. Shows what I know.
It also explains why you sometimes see "wrong" hyphenations in older scores, as there are several English words which were pronounced differently 100 years ago (usually due to shifting syllable emphasis). Of course, even more of those can be attributed simply to bad editing.
I should add a caveat, though. Perhaps this goes without saying, but in stating the rule for hyphenation so clearly I don't mean to imply that that way is always right and everyone else is wrong. As with most things in engraving (and life) there are many theories about how it ought to be. One persistent minority opinion (rare in America, more common in Britain) holds that hyphenation should reflect the particles that make it up, regardless of pronunciation, so that one writes "geo-graphy", "demo-cracy", etc.
I do believe that hyphenation to pronunciation is standard practice (for English) and reflects a plurality of educated opinion, and thus will be consistent with what singers expect to see, I just don't want to imply that therefore everyone has to observe it. I know that I resent it when I'm told I'm "wrong" if I don't, for instance, put tempo markings in bold.
I would say that hyphenation practice is more standardized than inclusion of courtesy accidentals, less standardized than arrangement of suspended noteheads in a chord with seconds.
mdl
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