Quote:
Originally Posted by Barty
My pet peeves:
Padding/margin above/below every paragraph, or worse, <br> between paragraphs.
Setting font-size for main text to something like 0.8em. Please do not set my font size for me.
Setting font-color for main text to something like #212121. This drives me nuts as it makes me think my eyes are going or there is something wrong with my kindle.
Heck, setting anything for main text other text-indent is a corporal offense as far a I'm concerned. Formatting is best which formats least!
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The following are my preferences:
- Paragraphs: I prefer a blank space between paragraphs. However, using an indent to indicate the beginning of a paragraph is also fine as long as one or the other is used. A minor irritant for me is when both are used together (which I've noticed in a few epubs I've purchased from Smashwords) since each makes the other redundant.
- Scene Breaks: I prefer a visual marker (such as a centered "* * *" that is kept with the next paragraph) to indicate scene break/changes (regardless of where it occurs), making it clear when a scene change has occurred. This avoids the situation where a blank line is used to indicate the scene change and it falls at the bottom/top of the page, losing the visual cue.
After reading the comments in this thread, I'm wondering if some of the inconsistent formatting problems are related to the epub format itself. It seems that so much of the formatting in epub is complex because it is done indirectly (create a style, apply it to the text, and then modify the style to modify the formatting of the text) rather than directly (for italic just tag the text itself within the ebook) like in the .pdb format.