Quote:
Originally Posted by nomesque
I started a thread on this on KindleBoards, and thought it'd be interesting to get opinions from a wider audience 
I've heard a number of people comment on the fact that Smashwords ebooks, for example, don't include a page break before a new chapter. Fair enough, I thought, makes sense for people to want each chapter to start on a new page. Then I got my PRS-300, and started reading ebooks with page breaks done correctly, and discovered - much to my surprise - that I HATE them. Passionately. Especially (although this might be caused by dodgy formatting) when I get two lines of text, click to next page, get a BLANK page, click again and get a chapter name and FIVE! lines of text. GAH! It's like eating a sandwich in teensy tiny bits!
So, you've got my opinion now, but I'm interested in hearing yours - what do you prefer? Page break before each chapter, no page breaks, or you really don't care? |
Looks as if you are getting even more pro-breaks feedback here than the kindleboards. Nice to see folks just like 'em.
A blank page between chapters is just lazy formatting, if it is unintentional. It likely indicates two consecutive page breaks or too many blank lines at the end of a chapter followed by an extra page break and then a page break at the beginning of the new chapter first page. Just poorly done and lazy formatting.
As for the issue of a "page" with a chapter title and a few lines of text that sounds like bad page layouts for the first page of each chapter. I would think each chapter would have proper paragraph styles appropriate for that page alone. Perhaps the incorrect paragraph style is being used for the chapter title in the books you have read with such a problem? The ebook world is lousy with poorly formatted books and that is at the feet of the publisher/editor or whoever is responsible for the formatting part of the equation.