[texhax] could someone give me an explanation as to why fontsize fails with an overfull box

[Philip Taylor]

David Carlisle wrote:
> There are no hyphenation points on "other" (the English hyphenation
> settings don't allow any word to break after one letter like o-ther)
The Oxford Mini-Dictionary of Spelling and Word-Division (from which the 
<Br.E> patterns were derived) allows no break on "other", nor does 
Harrap's English Punctuation and Hyphenation; however, Collins Gem 
Dictionary of English Spelling (includes complete hyphenation guidance) 
allows "oth+er".  Thus there is precedent for \hyphenation {oth-er} if 
one wishes to allow the word to be broken.

At some other time I will write the diatribe which is lurking in my 
head  — "Why I loathe LaTeX, and why \sloppy exemplifies everything that 
is wrong with it [1]".

** Phil.
--------
[1] The last part deserves a brief explanation :  "because \sloppy 
exists in order to allow the LaTeX user not to have to think".