Why is ‘prejudice’ syllabified as Prej-u-dice?

Question

While reading a book, I noticed prejudice was hyphenated to the next line in the following form: prej-udice. As I found it quite strange, I searched online for its syllables and apparently it had its syllables as prej-u-dice, so the book was not wrong about the hyphenation. But still, my heart strongly suggested that pre-ju-dice would be a more intuitive way to syllable the word.

Notice that the following words are partly similar but syllabled differently:

• Conjugation(con-ju-ga-tion)
• Perjury(per-ju-ry)

I wonder what makes prejudice so different from those words that it has j separated from u in the syllables?

As suggested in the comments, I'm adding the reference to the hyphenation in question:

• The exact location is the 6th line from the bottom of page 176 of Justice (ISBN 978-0-374-53250-5);
• 
  _{The original link to Google Books seemed to only work in my country, so I'm posting the search result image instead.}

Answer 1

Prejudice is syllabified as /ˈprɛd͡ʒ.ə.dəs/ and not */ˈprɛ.d͡ʒə.dəs/ because the lax vowel /ɛ/ doesn't occur at the end of syllables in English and therefore it should have a coda—a consonant after it (see Maximal Onset Principle).

Also according to John Wells' syllabification, ‘consonants are syllabified with the more strongly stressed of two flanking syllables’. The first syllable in prejudice has primary stress on it, so the /d͡ʒ/ is syllabified with that syllable, giving /ˈprɛd͡ʒ.ə.dəs/.

Merriam-Webster and American Heritage Dictionary give:

prej·​u·​dice
prej·u·diced, prej·u·dic·ing, prej·u·dic·es

So yes, it should be hyphenated prej·​u·​dice.

Answer 2

The first syllable is prej because the e is a short vowel and needs the j to close the syllable. If is did not have the j, the e would say long e.