Thanks for your, quite extensive, reply!
I'll only reply to a few things, because everyone is welcome to their opinion and I'm not trying to change yours!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tex2002ans
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And I'd say this is heavily outweighed by an ellipsis on a line by itself (bad line-breaking):
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I said this is an example
…
(Remember that line-breaks happen MUCH more often in ebooks compared to print. Think cellphone screen, very thin/tall.) |
This could happen
any time you have a space between items. It is not peculiar to the ellipses. To prevent it from being orphaned either use an before the ellipses character, or don't use a space at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tex2002ans
No. A properly designed ellipsis should seamlessly fit with periods (in both spacing/size).
For more ellipsis typography info, see Robert Bringhurst: "The Elements of Typographic Style":
{ATTACHMENT}
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That graphic kinda proves my point. There are uneven spaces between the dots and the commas. It does look evenly spaced with the 4th period and the ?!, but I don't necessarily agree that it is a
requirement to be such. The old typesetters only used multiple periods because they didn't have a specific ellipses symbol in their toolbag. If they did you would definitely have a space between the ellipses and ?!, or even a 4th period.
What is wrong with a slight space between an ellipses and a ,.?! they are different characters after all:
(all of these use the ellipses character, not dots)
Code:
end of a sentence. …Beginning of another.
end of a sentence… Beginning of another.
This has some clipped … in the middle.
I wonder,… what do you think of…?
Well…, you should think of…!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tex2002ans
So ebook users fiddling around with all different types of fonts, you're going to get a mess.
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The only time there should be a "mess" is if the eBook creator is using different fonts within the sentence... and yes, I have seen that... *shudder*.
My point is that a decent font should be consistent with itself. The ellipses should look good and have proper size/width/spacing compared to the other characters in that font.
Yes, there are "bad" fonts that make them look bad, but isn't that the beauty of ebooks? If you don't like the font you're using, you can change it to something else. If a font is internally inconsistent, then ... don't use it...! I can't force a user to think something is pretty ... and I wouldn't want to even try. I try and keep things as simple and as semantically correct as possible while letting the user determine what font they enjoy reading with. I also am
trying, certainly with a long way to go, to be as accessibility conscious as I can.
Even if only 42% of the devices out there say "dot" or pause before a period then I would consider that a much greater "sin" than having a slight difference in spacing between an ellipses and a .?!
Again, just my .02˘
Cheers,