UK TeX FAQ -- question 200

### Accented words aren't hyphenated

TeX's algorithm for hyphenation gives up when it encounters an `\accent` command; there are good reasons for this, but it means that quality typesetting in non-English languages can be difficult.

For TeX macro packages, you can avoiding the effect by using an appropriately encoded font (for example, a Cork-encoded font - see the EC fonts) which contains accented letters as single glyphs. LaTeX users can achieve this end simply by adding the command

      \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

to the preamble of their document. Other encodings (notably LY1, promoted by Y&Y - see commercial implementations) may be used in place of T1. Indeed, most current 8-bit TeX font encodings will 'work' with the relevant sets of hyphenation patterns.

In the future, perhaps, Omega will provide a rather different solution.