Hadrien, hyphenation is a Good Thing, but, as I wrote to you the other day, there are problems when the process is automated.
Here for others to ponder is a quote from my email to Hadrien:
Quote:
I have been looking at your editions of my books, as well as some others of yours, and I have what I hope is some constructive criticism about the problems of word-division. In composing text I strive at all times to make it run smoothly, so that the reader becomes drawn into the story and almost forgets he is reading at all. One of my desk-side reference works is HART'S RULES, and he says (p. 13) "avoid division if at all possible ... Not to incovenience the reader must always be one of the main considerations." If you're not familiar with this excellent little book I can send you the relevant pages.
Now I found that the algorithm Feedbooks uses does not observe usual practice in word-division, leading to some odd formations which hold the reader up. This is especially noticeable when division does not take place according to etymology, when division breaks two consonants that should be kept together, and when division takes place at the end of a page and the start of the next ("A divided word should not end at a right-hand page, if it is possible to avoid it").
A top-notch compositor exercises a high degree of skill and judgement in deciding whether or how to divide, but obviously it's completely out of the question for Feedbooks to make these divisions by hand.
I can see why you have chosen a Schoolbook font, in that size, but Schoolbook is rather large in the body, which means relatively few characters per line. This then increases the need for division, if the page is to be justified. Reducing the font size, perhaps choosing one that's more condensed, and increasing the leading, would leave you with an equally legible page. If you also went for a ragged-right layout, the need for division would be reduced still further. By then there might be so few divisions that it would be practical to eyeball the remaining text.
I am not for a moment suggesting that you reformat any of your existing ebooks, but these ideas might help improve your books in the future. But even as it is, yours are far better than some of the commercial ebooks I have seen.
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We need to make the experience of e-reading as much like conventional reading as possible.
Hadrien, do you, or anyone else, have any technical suggestions about hyphenation? It's one of those things like em dashes and curly quotes that need to be got right if e-reading is to thrive.
My usual word-processor for drafting fiction is an ancient DOS program called XyWrite. That allows you to compile a "hyphenation dictionary", a list of preferred break-places in words. Maybe something similar could be applied here.