[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DreamWriter

That's what I thought initially, but I haven't been able to find any other KDP books published within the last week that display auto-hyphenation on my Kindle Fire HD6! My device's software updated from 4.5.2 to 4.5.3 a few days ago, and it's still there.

Weirder and weirder. I've just ordered the sample to my Voyage. I'll report back. (I honestly don't remember if the Voyage hyphenates or not, which is weird, because I've been reading on it, personally, for the last few weeks fairly consistently. I suspect this means that it doesn't, OR, it does it unobtrusively. I would certainly have noticed weirdo hyphenation.)

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Amazon KDP's Technical Team is investigating and said I'll hear from them by Thursday, March 5 (one week from today).

Yowza, now they're giving dates? Hell, I'll give up my life with ECR and start emailing plain old Tech support (smile).

As far as I know, these oddities show up only on the Fire HD6. But when I download the KDP-converted file directly from KDP and sideload on my Fire, everything looks fine (no extra hyphens or too-dark text). It's so weird!

The darker-font thing is just freaking weird.

Here is the KF8 stylesheet (CSS) for LM as it is now. Within the last week or two, I've tried many other things, but those changes didn't seem to make any difference either. I'm open to suggestions! I didn't include some parts of that CSS below because (1) this post is already so long and (2) there's nothing suspect in that code (such as bold or font specifications not seen in other parts).

I admit, I didn't fine-toothed comb it, but no...I don't see anything that leaps out at me, other than you've swapped out for Helvetica. Did you always have Helvetica as your primary body font? (Also, FYI, this sample that I'm looking at still has that header font we discussed? Is it supposed to? I mean, is the sample supposed to have an embedded font, or...?)

Is it wrong to have <span class="bold italic">......</span> in the HTML to call both bold and italic CSS? The epub has always been this way, without any issues, but I thought I'd ask since I'm looking at everything.

Well, you shouldn't really have that if you don't have the bold-italic face itself. I don't think that should affect the remainder of your font, but as I've said boringly often, the very existence of an embedded font in a mobi can cause some serious wonky.

I do know how to disable auto-hyphenation completely by adding hyphens:none; in the body code, so that's an option. That results in a lot more ragged-right lines, though, even with full justification. I'm not sure which option most readers would prefer: extra hyphens or more ragged-right lines.

Yes, but it's also true that readers are well accustomed to the rivers of white/short lines, from the earliest K days through the halcyon K2 days, etc. I think it's essentially unnoticeable now, on a DEVICE. I recently was reading a someting-for-Dummies book and was completely put off by the fact that they'd obviously used align:left, and it screwed with my reading a bit. I doubt it would affect anyone else, but it did me.

Personally, I wouldn't mind auto-hyphenation if the software didn't hyphenate after two letters or hyphenate proper names and already-hyphenated words. It does seem to break the words properly otherwise (between syllables) in my books.

Shades of ADE 2.0!

I would appreciate knowing if anyone notices something in the above code that could be causing:

• auto-hyphenation (only on the Fire HD6, as far as I know)
• darker-than-normal text for page headings, chapter headings, and body text

I don't see it.

Also, does anyone see auto-hyphenation in the Last Mulligan sample on their Kindle Paperwhite, Voyage, or other KF8 ereader? That may be important to know. You may need to increase font size in order to see. On my Fire HD6, it's most evident using Bookerly font, but the hyphens are there with other device fonts, too.

Thanks so much for your interest and assistance thus far! I'll let you know if I make any progress.

As stated, I've ordered the sample to my Voyage, and I'll let you know.

UPDATE: no optional/soft hyphens whatsoever on the Voyage.

Here's a question:

Are the SAMPLE and the bought-book the same?

Hitch