[AuthorGreg]

Well, I don't know how many share my opinion, but the Nook Simple Touch, which I bought for reasons that will soon be obvious, is a whole new ballpark for displaying ePubs. It just doesn't flow text as tidy and neat as other Nook models, and nowhere near as good as any Kindle does.

I went to Barnes & Noble a couple of weeks ago, and while in there I realized I had always relied on the Pubit! online previewer or the Nook desktop reader to verify my work. So I downloaded some samples of my own work. On every Nook in the store my stuff looked just like it does on the Kindle. But when I got to the Nook Simple Touch, I was horrified to see some really terrible stuff: Em dashes that had been converted to en dashes was one thing that troubled me in particular.

But it got worse.

On any line where an italicized word appeared, the line height of that line increased by a factor of close to two. The only way I found to combat that was by increasing my line height by 150% using HTML (via the Calibre exploded directory). Doing that really only disguised the problem a little bit. If a Nook Simple Touch reader increased the line height setting to the highest level, none of the line heights expand UNLESS that line has an italicized word on it.

So I bought a Simple Touch and downloaded dozens of sample books. Most have this problem figured out. When the line height is increased on the Simple Touch, ALL of the lines increase in height. But again, for me, only lines with italics increase.

I've already addressed em dashes in another thread, but really, this thing with line spacing is driving me even more batty. Mind you, if a user selects the check mark for "publisher's default," I'm golden. But hardly anyone does that. Almost everyone chooses to narrow the margins and increase the line height.

Anyone else had a problem with this? In Word, I've tried everything for line spacing, but it ain't working. Lines with italics are giving me fits.

Thanks for any thoughts or advice,

Greg