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.

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.

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

```…leak- y…```

```…A- hab…```

To save someone the lookup, this is:

    U+00B7 MIDDLE DOT = midpoint (in typography); Georgian comma; Greek middle dot (ano teleia) • also used as a raised decimal point or to denote multiplication; for multiplication 22C5 is preferred

But note there is a separate Unicode scalar value for the dot operator:

    U+22C5 DOT OPERATOR • preferred to 00B7 for denotation of multiplication

.M and .P for those that use vim digraphs

The most surprising place I’ve seen it in is in the name of a certain street[1] in Barcelona, where it is used for pronounciation purposes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avinguda_del_Paral·lel

Curiously, the interpunct in the title of this article (Wall·E) can be control F searched with ("walle") but all of your usages cannot (try "sometimes" and "clarify")