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Old 05-14-2009, 12:25 PM   #12
dauwhe
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dauwhe has a complete set of Star Wars action figures.dauwhe has a complete set of Star Wars action figures.dauwhe has a complete set of Star Wars action figures.
 
Posts: 22
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Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Greenfield, Massachusetts, USA
Device: Kindle, Kindle 2, Sony Reader, iPod Touch
Quote:
Originally Posted by GJN View Post
One minor problem that's irritating is the frequent use of hard hyphens when soft hyphens are called for. (Yes, I know that a preposition shouldn't be used to end a sentence with). It seems that such hard hyphens could easily be converted to soft ones with a simple find and replace command. Why won't the publisher bother to do this?
First, the original typesetter of the book may have improperly used hard hyphens to break words at the end of a line.

Second, even if the source file is properly constructed, most extraction programs don't distinguish between regular hyphens and discretionary hyphens. So you usually can't do a simple search-and-replace.

Third, it's unclear if most eBook reading systems would treat discretionary hyphens properly. I should do some tests...

Dave
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