[agalunar]

Those aren’t syllable divisions, they’re hyphenation points!

From the footnote on page 219 of Word by Word by Kory Stamper (formerly a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster):

> Here is the one thing that our pronunciation editor wishes everyone knew: those dots in the headwords, like at “co·per·nic·i·um,” are not marking syllable breaks, as is evident by comparing the placement of the dots with the placement of the hyphens in the pronunciation. Those dots are called “end-of-line division dots,” and they exist solely to tell beleaguered proof-readers where, if they have to split a word between lines, they can drop a hyphen.

[Terr_]

Fair 'nuff, so a small patch would be:

    - Which ex·tends from hea·vy use
    + Which re·sem·bles hea·vy use

I'd argue in both cases the dot is serving an additional role (beyond those mentioned in the article) of marking significant positions within a word.

[ant6n]

Isn’t that equivalent to syllable splits — since words are split on syllable boundaries?

[IIsi50MHz]

Not always, because single-letter breaks like the following are usually forbidden:

```…leak- y…```

```…A- hab…```