Thanks for the additional responses!
I've been busy uploading files and viewing the samples once they're available. It's very time-consuming since I have to wait at least 5 hours between uploads. I haven't made any progress on the auto-hyphenation problem yet (see examples below), but I did upload another file just a bit ago, so we'll see if anything looks different once that sample's available...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tex2002ans
No, that author's problem was he used a "minus" symbol '−' instead of a hyphen '-':
"self−help" instead of "self-help"
"non−trivial" instead of "non-trivial"
[...]
The reason it was pulled was because it becomes quite apparent in Text-to-Speech software (and also messes with search functionality). If the Text-to-Speech was reading the book, it would have said "self minus help" and "non minus trivial".
I would recommend reading the Wikipedia article on Dashes, covering the hyphen, the en dash, the em dash, and a few others. It covers some of the usages between different style guides as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash
I would recommend against getting in the way of the hyphenation algorithms completely. I toss it in the same boat as inserting soft hyphens everywhere to try to "help" certain renderers justify a little bit better.
We had a long detailed chat about hyphenation in this topic:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=250906
The only case where using "hyphens: none" should occur is very sparingly (Chapter/Subchapter headings maybe). Hyphenation should be a setting left to the user's preferences, and the user's device.
Does anything differently occur if you apply the hyphenation CSS to p instead of body? (Although again, I don't recommend this using this hyphenation CSS at all).
Perhaps KindleGen looks for particularly egregious CSS applied to <body>. If you take a look at section 3.1 of the Kindle Publishing Guidelines, you can see some of the horrors that typically occurs there (forced black font, forced font size, forced background color, ...). Perhaps "hyphenation" is secretly in there as well, but not publicly documented yet. |
Thanks for your suggestions. In my ideal world, there won't be
any auto-hyphenation once I figure out WHY Amazon KDP is unexpectedly defaulting to that in my e-books. And I hope to accomplish that without any hyphen-suppression CSS at all. It seems like it should be possible since I'm not seeing this in any other recently published e-books at Amazon.
I followed that author's story in threads both here and at KBoards (where the author himself chimed in). So I am aware that the problem was thought to be his use of the minus symbol (or perhaps the hyphen-minus, which is different) instead of hyphens. On page 4 of
this thread, Atunah (who is also a MR member) reported that even
after the initial problem was fixed, she saw odd hyphenation in his e-book on her Fire HD6 similar to what I see in my e-books now. That was in December. This is the example she gave:
the white gleam of bone through her blood-soa-
ked fur.
That problem must've been fixed subsequently because the sample of his book (
High Moor 2: Moonstruck) looks perfect now on my Fire HD6 (full justification with no ragged-right lines and zero auto-hypenation!).
[edit: If you enlarge the font on the Fire HD6, there is actually some bizarre auto-hyphenation.]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Notjohn
"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?"
Nothing on the KDP forums. And no, I haven't published anything recently.
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Thanks for letting me know. I had checked the KDP forum before starting this thread and didn't see anything. If these are widespread problems, I would think we'd be seeing other self-published authors reporting it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Notjohn
OMG, it has gone wild! I bought a book this morning and sat down to read it on my Fire HD (7-inch tablet) after lunch (I'm not lazy; I work a long morning, 5 to 12). In a very early chapter (3 percent into the book) I found this break:
Speechw-
riter
The book is from Sentinel, a Penguin imprint. It's copyright 2011, and I've never before seen this effect on my Fire HD, so I'm guessing it's a software or firmware update.
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What's the title of that book? I'd like to take a look at the sample on my HD6. I've been downloading samples and can't find
any that have this problem. If anyone sees one, please let me know!
I initially thought it was a Fire software update, too, but why aren't we seeing the auto-hyphenation in other books then?
[image links broken]
Examples #4 and #5 show my most recent results. I circled the auto-hyphenation that irks me the most.
These dumb hyphenation choices
are minimized substantially when I decrease the font size on my device, but that may be too small for some readers' preference. I'd really like to eliminate the occasional ragged-right lines, too, because I'm not seeing that in other e-books on my Fire HD6!
The Chapter font weight is acceptable now, so that was some progress made.
Note that there is
NO CSS in the epub file for Examples #4 and #5 that mentions anything about hyphens/hyphenation at all. The e-book previews fine on my Fire HD6 when I view the Kindlegen-created file—right justification is even with no short lines at all and no auto-hyphenation. That is what I'd like to see in the published book, if possible. As I mentioned, other self-published books look that way on the Fire HD6.
I've been making e-books for four years now. I've never had this problem before with the same titles. My tools haven't changed (Sigil and Kindlegen). I'm stumped, but I'll keep trying to figure out what's causing these issues.
I have been trying most suggestions offered here, so I do appreciate the time everyone's spent trying to help. I'll update when/if I make more progress in narrowing down the issues.