Dear Deborah

Many thanks for the exemplary explanations, in particular the historical 
background, and the reassurance that iso-8859-1 and unicode are not 
divergent on the semantics of this particular character

Would it be fair to say, in summary, that  using SHY and <lb/> in 
combination to represent the hyphenation practice of early printers is 
something the TEI should consider recommending?

On my reading, the only possible downside is that some rendering 
software might decide (conceivably) to discard the SHY, or to change the 
spelling of the hyphenated word, while still observing the linebreak 
indicated by the <lb/> -- or even worse introduce *another* linebreak.

I note in passing that the draft TEI Tite documentation and the TEI in 
Libraries "best practice" document both already make this recommendation.

Lou

Deborah W. Anderson wrote:
> Dear Kevin, Lou, Martin, and others who had written in about "SOFT HYPHEN"