[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Could it be--is it possible--that the print designer used a unique character for the dash? Rather than the usual, plain-old, vanilla, boring dash?

Exactly.

99% of the time, it's Soft Hyphens:

• Odd/phantom hyphenation?
• Red squigglies in correctly spelled words?
• Blank squares (or question marks) appearing randomly in your words?
• Search not working correctly?

Soft hyphens!

Originally Posted by red_scharlach

Any idea why this may be happening?

Can you open the book in Sigil and press Tools > Reports > Characters in HTML Files:



1. Does your EPUB have the "soft hyphen" listed anywhere?

2. Does it have any other hyphen-like characters?

• – (U+2013) = EN DASH
• — (U+2014) = EM DASH
• − (U+2212) = MINUS SIGN

or (odd) hyphen characters?

• ‐ (U+2010) = HYPHEN
• ‑ (U+2011) = NON-BREAKING HYPHEN

Side Note: First time ever coming across those two in the wild... Latest ebook I was reading hyphenated very oddly on my phone... showing up as "random" question marks.

They used HYPHEN (U+2010) instead of the plain ol' HYPHEN-MINUS (U+002D) (the one on your keyboard).

Turns out, many fonts don't have that character (~1/2 on my computer have it).

Aaaaand as I read red_scharlach's responses to JSWolf+others... I'm suspecting that may be the issue here.

Originally Posted by red_scharlach

In my e-books, I set the hyphenation of regular paragraphs in "auto", like this:

p {
hyphens: auto;
}

There's no need to specify hyphens, unless you overwrote it someplace else.

(Best to just strip all CSS hyphens completely, then leave it up to the device/reader.)

Originally Posted by red_scharlach

And I set it to "none" on the elements I don't want to hyphenate

Don't do that in ebooks. It's a poor idea.

Remember, readers can be reading on HUGE FONTS on very skinny/small devices (think cellphone). Disabling hyphenation only gets in the way.

The best example is: "Acknowledgments".

Imagine that heading, unbroken, in huge font, on a cellphone.

For more info, see the great 2018 article: EPUBSecrets.org: "User Experience: What Works, and How?"

Originally Posted by Quoth

Someone once used a unicode minus instead of dash for hyphen. How they managed to type it? It won't display in some fonts and also rendering, if there are no spaces, won't line-break at it! It looks the same on many fonts.

Yes, that minus-signs-instead-of-hyphens was a "famous" one... creating hell for Text-to-Speech.

I referenced it quite a few times over the years.

That ebook got taken down way back in 2014.

* * *

Side Note: In Print, all readers see is the surface result. Typographers control exactly where things land on the page + control the font/font-size. Authors/designers can also get away with gibberish (wrong characters + hacks), as long as it "looks okay".

But in Ebooks, the underlying text/code—not just the surface—matters. Readers can be reading on all different devices (large monitors, cellphones) + in completely different ways (Text-to-Speech, Night Mode, HUGE font size, all different fonts), so you have to remove those hacks + use the proper characters.

You used MINUS SIGN instead of a hyphen? Text-to-Speech will be saying "minus" in the middle of your words.

You forced black text? Sure, your Print book will look fine (since it's on white paper), but your ebook will be black-on-black text when the reader puts on Night Mode.

Marked your language wrong? Text-to-Speech will pronounce things wrong, you'll get red squigglies, and auto-hyphenation will be busted.

"Symbol" font + using "abcd" for all your Greek characters? That will become gibberish in an ebook. Use the proper Unicode characters: αβγδ.

Images of characters instead of the actual characters? The second the reader changes colors or raises the font size, it'll explode.

Scenebreaks as a blank gap between paragraphs? No good in ebooks. New scenes may fall on the exact top/bottom of a screen, (and users may override your CSS), so it's best to use a visible mark instead.