[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Hitch, I'd like your opinion.

Natch, formatting genius that I am. (HA!!!)

Given that a lot of people who read eBooks be they ePub, KF8, or KFX, they aren't going to be trying to dive into the code and changing it to what they want. They read the eBook as is.

Agreed--the vast majority, I'd say.

So, what's the best overall formatting with regards to paragraphs and space between or no space between and if yes to space between paragraphs, hiw much space?

Well, in this, you're basically saying, format the book as-best-possible for those who can't/won't/don't-know-how? Personally, I do not care for spacing between paragraphs, all things being equal. However, there are some devices that can make it a bit tricky to see the start/end of paragraphs, and for those, obviously, that nudge of space helps the reader understand, "this is a new paragraph."

In typography of the old-school, you set your indents to be harmonious. For example, if your page is set to a 12/14 (12pt font in a 14 point line-height or lead), then traditionally, you set your indent to 1em (the font size) or 1 lead (14pt sized). To do that in an eBook, you'd realistically set that to 1.2ems (for the one lead sizing). Most folks in the eBook world--or, I should say, most professionals, as far as I know--use one em. I don't think I've seen very many one-lead indents, but it's possible.

But on some devices, the indents and line-spacing (line-height) can be overriden. Margins, not so much. So, let's say that you did use a 12/14; you did use a one-lead ident, but Moon Reader or what-have-you overrides it. How does the reader more easily "see" the new paragraph, if the indents have disappeared or, rather, all-but-disappeared? That extra nudge of space helps. That's one of the reasons that in very, very text-heavy books that we do, with very long paragraphs, you'll see us put in a very small additional amount of space, between them. The Kindles typically don't mess up the formatting that much, but you'd be amazed at what one person with Kindle for PC can DO to your book.

Otherwise, I actually do agree with most--no spacing between paragraphs, it can be a blight, and I certainly don't hold with a full line (or even a half-line) between first-line-indent paras.

Also, what do you think of chapter headings that are overly large (IMHO)? I've seen some that use a 20% top margin. Even a I think even a 2em top margin is too large. I go with a .8em top/bottom margin in most cases. It doesn't waste too much space and looks a lot better. What's your opinion in chatper headings?

You're talking about a couple of different things here. You're talking about the size of the chapter heads, and the margins. PLUS, don't forget, if you're talking about a formatter that's matching a print book, the choice may be out of her hands. I mean, I've certainly dealt with this, repeatedly. What looks awesome in print is desired for the companion ebook, and I can't really blame them for that. I can't really speak to some one-size-fits-all rule, here, Jon. I don't think that's realistic, for "all" books.

If someone has a big print chapter head, we'll try to emulate it in an eBook, at an appropriate size and distance from the margins. We tell our clients that we "channel" the look and feel, not match it EXACTLY.

We deal with this all the damn time, with clients that insist that their eBook "heading" has to be 48pts, or whatever, just like their print book, and I show them WHY that's a terrible idea. I can usually talk them out of it, but NOT always. I've been required to slap something in there like that. When they won't defer to my judgement, I'll tell them that we'll do it, but I put in a proviso that if the book comes back from Amazon with a KQN, or a reader complaint, etc., we won't fix it for free. Just like I'll turn down fixed-layout for any book that doesn't absolutely need it, just because the client doesn't understand eBooks. Won't do it.

Another thing, why is it that publishers do not use proper blockquotes and instead use overly complicated simulated blockquotes?

Because they a) don't know how or b) think that BQ formatting doesn't work in MOBI, usually. I also loathe it, but...Jon, if you didn't see under their skirts, would you really object? Typically, you only know that they're there because you CAN, not because it's obvious.

Personally, I turn widows and orphans off in CSS and I remove paragraph spacing. The result of this is that on a page with no extra space, the page ends in the same place as any other page that fills the screen with no extra spacing such as a section break or offset text.

Right, and some people want them on, because they think that X being separated from Y is somehow "more important" or "more typographically correct" than not having it on, or squaring the page, or, or or. The fact that squaring the page is impossible, at this point in the technology, seems to be an argument that's routinely ignored. Or they argue that it "should" be easy, to do al this in ebooks, simply because they don't have the faintest understanding of what has to be calculated to do all that. OR, what a typesetter really goes through, hand-in-hand with the book's editor, to make those pages square, and those headings not separate from the body content, and so on and so on and so on.

I think that some folks think that their ideas about what's "right" or "wrong" in typesetting are real, when oftentimes, they're not. I've had more than a few instances of this. Had one client that had a COW about alleged stub-ends. She thought that any single word, at the end of a paragraph, was this horrible typographic faux-pas, and that we--the typesetters--had to
manually kern her entire paragraph, to make it fit. Uh, NOPE. Yes, stubs under 3 letters are considered "messy," and post-hyphenation stubs are considered to be a typographic mistake, but a word like "there" isn't.

Or the client that went through her book, and sent us something like 600 edits--all removing the word "I" from the last spot in any given line. Some idiot had told her that lines in a book--I mean, the end of any given line, inside a paragraph--couldn't end with "I" as in:

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog and I
thought that really, it should be the other way. I told my friend
Lucy that she should...

(Assume that this was all justified in the usual way). I was gobsmacked at this piece of tomfoolery. How MANY hours did it take her, to work up that proof form, with all those useless and utterly unnecessary edits?

It's like anything else--typesetting is beset with urban myths, or whatever you want to call them, other than misconceptions, about what's right and wrong. For example, Orphans (when the first line of a paragraph starts at the bottom of a page) aren't actually wrong. There's no reason to turn yourself inside out, to move that to the next page. That's an idea borne by Microsoft, WordPerfect, and Word. Not typographers. But, it's taken hold, and now I get to deal with scores of authors who both want their pages squared--and no widows or orphans, either. Well, I hate to tell ya, but that's a lotta lotta "tweaky" time. It's one thing to set INDD to not have widows--it's another to do that AND square the pages.

Anyway, you wanted my opinions, and, oh lucky you, now you have them. :-)

Hitch