Thank you both for your very helpful comments and suggestions!
I just uploaded another revised file to KDP for
Last Mulligan, so I should know within a few hours (when the book sample is available) whether there's any improvement in the way hyphenation and justification are handled on the Fire HD6.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dgatwood
#2 is better than #3 by far. Honestly, IMO, it's better than #1 except for the font weight problem. I'd rather have an auto-hyphenated word than large gaps. But that's just personal preference. But the failure to fill the line... try explicitly setting values for some related CSS properties:
Code:
word-spacing: normal;
letter-spacing: normal;
word-break: normal;
text-justify: inter-word;
on those paragraphs and see if any of them make a difference.
BTW, you probably want to set the hyphens value to "manual" rather than "none", so that if there are any soft hyphens somewhere, they won't get ignored.
As for the heading being bold, this might be a weird bug related to the tag used. I have this vague recollection that some readers (maybe some Kindle readers, maybe Nook, I forget) did weird things when you used a header tag ( h1, h2, h3...) like always making the text bold no matter what you do in the stylesheet. If you're using one of those tags, try replacing it with a styled div tag at the appropriate em size and see if the problem goes away. |
I don't like the large word gaps in Example #1 either. My objections to Example #2 are the extra-bold fonts and inappropriate auto-hyphenation decisions. The second page of that example chapter has quite a few words hyphenated after two letters, which I don't like at all. Hyphenating names (like
Tan-ner on Example #2) is a no-no, too. We'll see if my latest upload fixes some of those problems.
Late last night, I tried some of the code you suggested. Substituting the
h1 tags with
div tags didn't help with the font weight problem, but it did fix another minor issue I'd been having, so that's good. Other changes I made seemed to have no effect, but I just uploaded another revised file, so I'll know later today whether those changes helped.
The odd thing about the Chapter font weight is that it's always been explicitly set to bold, and before this recent revision, the same font always looked
fine on the Fire HD6. Now, it's like it's
extra-bold! I changed no CSS that would've affected that, so I have idea why that changed. It seems to happen at KDP.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Notjohn
That's standard. Where spacing would yield too wide a gap between words, the KDP conversion will use the occasional short line instead. In my experience, though, it's seldom as often as once a page. Perhaps the allowed gap has been shortened in the 6-inch tablet?
Certainly the wild hyphenating is new. I have seen the occasional conventionally published Kindle book with hyphenated words, but never one of my own. It wasn't too long ago that the KDP permitted hyphen (or em dash) breaks at all, but treated such words as a unit. I was delighted when that was changed, because I had earlier changed my formatting to get rid of most hyphens and to use British instead of American style with dashes (that is, a space followed by an en dash followed by another space). I like the current setup better -- but not if it means wild hyphenating! Perhaps this is a trial run on a new hyphenating software?
|
Yes, the hyphen/em dash line breaks were a welcome improvement!
I changed four e-book files within the last week, and all auto-hyphenated by default on the Fire HD6. No hyphens in the Android Kindle app. There was nothing in my CSS referring to hyphenation at all. These previously published books always justified by default, but never had auto-hyphenation. It's weird. Have any other self-published authors mentioned this lately, here or at other forums you frequent? Have you published/republished to KDP in recent days?
I guess I'm afraid readers may think that
I made those dumb hyphenation choices. Selecting a smaller font size
does help to minimize the frequency of auto-hyphenation—and readers can change that—but some readers will prefer a larger font. I know of an author who got a lot of press recently after he was scolded by KDP for "excessive hyphenation" in his e-book; this apparent problem with auto-hyphens on the HD6 may be the reason.
The hyphenation issues are probably magnified on the Fire HD6 because of the small screen size. It is odd that the e-books are auto-hyphenated on the Fire HD6 but not in the Android app. Justification is handled much better in the app, too.
I didn't mention in my original post, but in addition to auto-hyphenation default, KDP also changed the size of different chapter graphics (in all four books) on my Fire HD6. They're smaller than they were. Same graphics as before, and I changed no code that should've caused that. The graphics stayed the same size as before on my other devices. The default hyphenation, heavy font weight, and graphic size changes seen on the Fire HD6 are affecting all four e-book files I uploaded within the last week. After I fix this one, I'll optimize the others.
The most frustrating part is that
none of these issues show up on KDP's previewer or in Kindlegen-created mobi test files on my devices. The extra-bold chapter font and auto-hyphenation appear only after publication on the Fire HD6. It's an agonizingly slow process to troubleshoot since I can't upload a new file to KDP until five to six hours after the last file was uploaded! <sigh>
Since there doesn't seem to be a way for KDP publishers to get the e-books to display on the Fire HD6 (which a lot of readers use now because of its low price, screen clarity, and size) like Example #1, I'll drop that idea and concentrate on refining Example #2 for now. I'd still be interested to know if the majority of readers would prefer #2 or #3, though. If #3 is strongly preferred, I can use
hyphens:none; (or
hyphens:manual; ???) in CSS to block auto-hyphenation.
Thanks again for taking the time to help. I'll post with results of the latest upload later today or early tomorrow.