Huge Sentence and Paragraph Spaces EPub to Mobi

[Dasha]

I know I have been on and on about this' but I have read and hunted" and I just don't understand the Jargon in these forums about my Problems! The most common is I think answered By a spacing Problem on book the Sentence and Paragraph spacing I have checked "Remove Paragraph spacing" in "Look and Feel" In Callibre (See ScS ) Can someone please tell me in detail how to set this as a Template in Callibre so all the books I convert in future will look the same as Calibri 10 font on a Computer after it's printed on Paper; that's the size I need it to appear in my Kindle?

The closest answer I can find is from [B]theducks in Reply to vanpelten 03-10-11
Can't get rid of paragraph spaces converting to Mobi

theducks suggests the answer of removing the' " class="calibre4" /> " after every Paragraph and that sounds like an answer? But how do I remove it? What do I change it too? Do I Do it in "Sigil "as the EPub format before putting the Book in Callibre and Converting to Mobi? What about the sentences they have huge spaces too?

I have half finished sentences with huge gaps in them also as well as Page and Paragraph Number's halfway down a Page eg Half way down a Page
[ Four ] meaning Paragraph 4 appears and some weird Typos' like this the Name of the Book I am reading is:

The Savage Day and I found this in chapter Four and elsewhere In the Middle of the Page :

jzThe Savage Day

The I have included a Screen shot and a Pic from my Digital Camera (onkindle) hope you can help it's just spoiling the whole Kindle eBook issue for me

Callibre is all in Points How many Points is 10 font anyway is it 10 Point?
Thanks for any help you may give, Dasha

[Blossom]

Try Heuristic processing and check Delete blank lines between paragraphs. It might work depending on how the epub is built for the extra spacing between paragraphs.

The problem is usually in the Style sheet of the epub. It can be edited more to your liking just explode the epub using Calibre then edit style sheet then click rebuild epub. If the problem is then fixed then convert to mobi.

As for the other issue. I can't tell how many indie ebooks or self publish back titles I have bought with many problems like this. Myself I usually convert the book to html and edit it in word then reconvert in Calibre to mobi. Or if you use Sigil you can use that to edit the epub.

My last issue was the author put all dialogue in blockquotes. That was fun to fix!

Unfortunately ebook coding is like snowflakes no two are alike. so you can't just make a template to fix formatting problems. It has to be done individually most of the time.

I do know with the Kindle that font tags can cause issues so I always remove them specially the +1 -1 Font size tags.

You're best bet is to familiarize yourself with basic html and css styles sheets.

[Dasha]

Thanks Blossom I will do another copy of the book in Question and Check the Herolipstick Option But I have to ask you about some stuff first


The problem is usually in the Style sheet of the epub. It can be edited more to your liking just explode the epub using Calibre then edit style sheet then click rebuild epub. If the problem is then fixed then convert to mobi.

How do I Explode it using Callibre, and what does it mean to Edit the style Sheet' what is the Style sheet" is it a Template that sets Parameters for converting stuff I don't understand


As for the other issue. I can't tell how many indie ebooks or self publish back titles I have bought with many problems like this. Myself I usually convert the book to html and edit it in word then reconvert in Calibre to Mobi. Or if you use Sigil you can use that to edit the epub.
How do I do that Cobba?

My last issue was the author put all dialogue in blockquotes. That was fun to fix!

Unfortunately ebook coding is like snowflakes no two are alike. so you can't just make a template to fix formatting problems. It has to be done individually most of the time.
Does that mean I should whenever possible Download Lit or Mobi?


I do know with the Kindle that font tags can cause issues so I always remove them specially the +1 -1 Font size tags. what is a Font Tag? What is +1 -1 Font Size

You're best bet is to familiarize yourself with basic html and css styles sheets.[/QUOTE]
How do I do that and How do I get a File I am about to convert into a Edit-able state

Blossom I have also realised that the File I converted to Mobi before I had this was a Lit File NOT EPub as I said, but all the Files I have had converted have had a big space between Sentences and Paragraph problem sooo Thanks again for your time Cheers Dasha

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Dasha

Thanks Blossom I will do another copy of the book in Question and Check the Herolipstick Option But I have to ask you about some stuff first


How do I Explode it using Callibre, and what does it mean to Edit the style Sheet' what is the Style sheet" is it a Template that sets Parameters for converting stuff I don't understand





Does that mean I should whenever possible Download Lit or Mobi?


what is a Font Tag? What is +1 -1 Font Size

How do I do that and How do I get a File I am about to convert into a Edit-able state

Blossom I have also realized that the File I converted to Mobi before I had this was a Lit File NOT EPub as I said, but all the Files I have had converted have had a big space between Sentences and Paragraph problem sooo Thanks again for your time Cheers Dasha

To Explode a epub in Calibre just right click on the book in the file list of Calibre and choose "tweak epub" then click explode epub. You will see a folder with a bunch of html files but what what you looking for is a file with the extension *.css like Stylesheet.css You can edit this file in notepad or anything line editor like PSPad, Notepad++, Notepad2...etc then click rebuild the epub when done.

All ebooks are coded in html like an old webpage. You have the ebook you actually see and source code which tells the ebook how to look. Tags are in the source code and between <> symbols. A Style sheet is an external file linked to the actually html. It tells the html file how to display formatting like margins, line spacing, headers, bold, italics and alot more. You can google Style sheets basics to get more of understanding of how to write one.

If you need more help Calibre has a forum here for conversation issues. Someone way more skilled with Calibre should be able to help you more, I would post there for more detailed help.

You might try to convert from Lit to Epub do your fixes then convert to mobi and then do a mobi to mobi to remove any excess coding in the book.

[HarryT]

Moderator Notice
If you have questions about using Calibre, you'll get a lot more help if you ask in the Calibre forum. If you have questions about building Kindle books, the Mobi file format forum, or the Workshop forum, is the place to ask. This forum is about using the Kindle, not creating Kindle content.

Thanks.

[Dasha]

Thanks for everything Blossom I will go the other route but just what you have told me is a good start and clears up some of it Thank you Regards Dasha

[damaki]

I had such issues with a genuine e-book from amazon and these are pretty easy to fix. I converted to epub then here is the result (with an excerpt from the book, small enough to be legal):

<p class="calibre4">LIVING IN TRENTON in July is like living inside a big pizza oven. Hot, airless, aromatic.</p>
<p class="calibre4">Because I didn’t want to miss any of the summer experience I had the sunroof open on my Honda CRX. My brown hair was pulled up into a windsnarled, curls-gone-to-frizz ponytail. The sun baked the top of my head, and sweat trickled under my black spandex sports bra. I was wearing matching spandex shorts and a sleeveless oversized Trenton Thunders baseball jersey. It was an excellent outfit except it gave me no place to stick my .38. Which meant I was going to have to borrow a gun to shoot my cousin Vinnie.</p>

You notice the <p class="calibre4"> thing? That mean we need to fix the "calibre4" style in the css.
Here is the css part:

.calibre4 {
    display: block;
    margin-bottom: 0;
    margin-left: 0;
    margin-right: 0;
    margin-top: 1em;
    text-indent: 2em;
    word-wrap: break-word
    }

You see that "margin-top"? It should have a 0 value. Please notice that the culprit could also have been margin-bottom.
Here you are \o/

I converted back my book to mobi and enjoyed it

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by Blossom

To Explode a epub in Calibre just right click on the book in the file list of Calibre and choose "tweak epub" then click explode epub. You will see a folder with a bunch of html files but what what you looking for is a file with the extension *.css like Stylesheet.css You can edit this file in notepad or anything line editor like PSPad, Notepad++, Notepad2...etc then click rebuild the epub when done.

blossom....i didn't know how this feature worked and thanks to you now i do. i just used your info to fix an epub prior to conversion to a mobi.

[JSWolf]

The problem is the ePub is not properly formatted. It's not a Calibre issue. Fix the ePub so it has indents and no excess line spaces and then convert to Mobi and it will be OK.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by alansplace

blossom....i didn't know how this feature worked and thanks to you now i do. i just used your info to fix an epub prior to conversion to a mobi.

You're both welcome!
I use Topstyle Light when messing with style sheets. It's free.

All a epub is a zip file literally. You can open it up in Winrar and edit the style sheet that way if you don't have Calibre open. Always back up your original just in case something goes wonky.

[JSWolf]

I use notepad++ to edit the CSS of an ePub. It's just that easy to do most of the time.