How to prevent breaks within a 'word'

AlexBell · 11-04-2015, 01:08 AM

I'm working on an ebook in which the first part of the story takes place in --shire, and a city called X--.

I'm using —shire for the name of the county, and X— for the city. But every now and then both constructions break - with the — at the end of the line, and shire at the beginning of the next line - similarly for X—

Is there anyway to stop this happening? It happens rarely, but when it does it's ugly.

I've tried using —&zwj;shire, but that doesn't work.

apprenticeharper · 11-04-2015, 01:53 AM

If an ePub renderer ignores the zero width joiner, I don't think there's much you can do.

Hmmm.... I seem to remember that one renderer would no break a work if it started with a soft hyphen. Worth a try, but I'm not optimistic.

For Apple's iBooks you could use the {-webkit-hyphens:none;} CSS attribute. But I don't know how many other renderers take notice of that non-standard CSS.

GeoffR · 11-04-2015, 02:56 AM

You could use a quotation dash (U+2015) instead of an em dash (U+2014).

A quotation dash looks the same as an em dash, but doesn't break between the dash and the word.

The only problem is that some fonts don't contain a quotation dash, so you would want to embed a font that has one to be sure.

RbnJrg · 11-04-2015, 06:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GeoffR

You could use a quotation dash (U+2015) instead of an em dash (U+2014).

GrannyGrump · 11-05-2015, 10:04 AM

If you don't mind messy markup, you might try a span with whitespace: nowrap
but then it might drop down to the next line, leaving a ragged right margin.

You can experiment with other whitespace settings, and see if any give a workable result.
http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_text_white-space.asp

I keep seeing breaks with nbsp and with trailing emdash all the time. I often even see a break between a full stop and the closing quote mark --- kerning and hyphenation algorithms leave so much to be desired!

AlexBell · 11-06-2015, 01:17 AM

Thanks to you all. I'll try quotation dash and see what happens. I presume the if the font family doesn't include quotation dash I won't see any dash at all?

HarryT · 11-06-2015, 03:02 AM

On most devices, if a font doesn't contain a glyph, an empty square box will be displayed instead.

I'd recommend against using a glyph which is not commonly present in fonts.

Notjohn · 11-06-2015, 05:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

If you don't mind messy markup, you might try a span with whitespace: nowrap
but then it might drop down to the next line, leaving a ragged right margin.

Short lines are fairly common in Kindle editions, so that wouldn't bother me. Some time ago, Amazon evidently changed the software so that if the gaps got too wide between words in a justified line, then the line would fall short of the right margin. I see this often in e-books.

HarryT · 11-06-2015, 06:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Some time ago, Amazon evidently changed the software so that if the gaps got too wide between words in a justified line, then the line would fall short of the right margin. I see this often in e-books.

Kindles have always done this, certainly as far back as my first Kindle, which was the Kindle Keyboard.

Jellby · 11-06-2015, 03:43 PM

This is the main problem with Spanish books, where em-dashes (or quotation dashes) are used everywhere in dialogue... This "let's allow line break at either side of a dash, regardless of anything else" makes them look awful. Using quotation dashes is not a solution without embedding a font (and embedding a font is not a solution).

doubleshuffle · 11-07-2015, 05:04 AM

Alex, have you tried the word joiner?

It looks awful in Sigil's book view, but seems to work just fine in RMSDK.

(Thanks to pynch for mentioning this in the German forum a while back!)

EDIT: The html code, missing from the Wiki entry is ⁠

Notjohn · 11-07-2015, 06:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

Kindles have always done this, certainly as far back as my first Kindle, which was the Kindle Keyboard.

It was in June 2010 that my Kindle (I think a K3 Keyboard) updated and the display changed for me.

AlexBell · 11-08-2015, 01:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Alex, have you tried the word joiner?

It looks awful in Sigil's book view, but seems to work just fine in RMSDK.

(Thanks to pynch for mentioning this in the German forum a while back!)

EDIT: The html code, missing from the Wiki entry is ⁠

Thanks, doubleshuffle. Not only have I not tried it I've never even heard of it. I'll do some research and try it out. I don't use Sigil, so that should not be a problem for me.

AlexBell · 11-10-2015, 02:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Thanks, doubleshuffle. Not only have I not tried it I've never even heard of it. I'll do some research and try it out. I don't use Sigil, so that should not be a problem for me.

Thanks for your trouble, but it doesn't work - at least, not on my Sony T3. I get the dreaded little square with a question mark inside.

doubleshuffle · 11-10-2015, 06:39 AM

What a pity. I thought I had successfully tested it in ADE, Bluefire and on my Kobo, but it's been a while. I was looking forward to using it in the collection I'm working on right now - keeping it for last due to the horrible look in Sigil - well, seems I can forget about that now.

Although I think I'll do some more testing and if it really works like I remember, I might offer one version with and one without...

11-04-2015, 01:08 AM	#1
AlexBell Wizard Posts: 3,413 Karma: 13369310 Join Date: May 2008 Location: Launceston, Tasmania Device: Sony PRS T3, Kobo Glo, Kindle Touch, iPad, Samsung SB 2 tablet	How to prevent breaks within a 'word' I'm working on an ebook in which the first part of the story takes place in --shire, and a city called X--. I'm using —shire for the name of the county, and X— for the city. But every now and then both constructions break - with the — at the end of the line, and shire at the beginning of the next line - similarly for X— Is there anyway to stop this happening? It happens rarely, but when it does it's ugly. I've tried using —&zwj;shire, but that doesn't work. Last edited by AlexBell; 11-06-2015 at 01:14 AM.

11-07-2015, 05:04 AM	#11
doubleshuffle Unicycle Daredevil Posts: 13,944 Karma: 185432100 Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Planet of the Pudding Brains Device: Aura HD (R.I.P. After six years the USB socket died.) tolino shine 3	Alex, have you tried the word joiner? It looks awful in Sigil's book view, but seems to work just fine in RMSDK. (Thanks to pynch for mentioning this in the German forum a while back!) EDIT: The html code, missing from the Wiki entry is ⁠ Last edited by doubleshuffle; 11-07-2015 at 05:07 AM.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Word breaks	FlexUser	Calibre	10	03-24-2014 02:42 AM
How to prevent page breaks?	bgoldnyxnet	ePub	9	01-28-2014 09:45 AM
Getting word breaks to work correctly	Techno4	ePub	1	08-27-2012 01:27 PM
Epub to Mobi conversion strange word breaks	inkwords	Conversion	0	03-04-2012 05:29 PM
Word Wrap and Creating Line breaks for paragraphs?	mjt57	Calibre	3	01-03-2011 10:14 PM

11-04-2015, 01:53 AM	#2
apprenticeharper Apprentices Against DRM Posts: 46 Karma: 9787852 Join Date: Feb 2015 Location: UK Device: Asus Laptop	If an ePub renderer ignores the zero width joiner, I don't think there's much you can do. Hmmm.... I seem to remember that one renderer would no break a work if it started with a soft hyphen. Worth a try, but I'm not optimistic. For Apple's iBooks you could use the {-webkit-hyphens:none;} CSS attribute. But I don't know how many other renderers take notice of that non-standard CSS.

11-04-2015, 02:56 AM	#3
GeoffR Wizard Posts: 3,821 Karma: 19162882 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: Te Riu-a-Māui Device: Kobo Glo	You could use a quotation dash (U+2015) instead of an em dash (U+2014). A quotation dash looks the same as an em dash, but doesn't break between the dash and the word. The only problem is that some fonts don't contain a quotation dash, so you would want to embed a font that has one to be sure.

11-05-2015, 10:04 AM	#5
GrannyGrump Obsessively Dedicated... Posts: 3,213 Karma: 34984928 Join Date: May 2011 Location: JAPAN (US expatriate) Device: Sony PRS-T2, ADE on PC	If you don't mind messy markup, you might try a span with whitespace: nowrap but then it might drop down to the next line, leaving a ragged right margin. You can experiment with other whitespace settings, and see if any give a workable result. http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_text_white-space.asp I keep seeing breaks with nbsp and with trailing emdash all the time. I often even see a break between a full stop and the closing quote mark --- kerning and hyphenation algorithms leave so much to be desired!

11-06-2015, 01:17 AM	#6
AlexBell Wizard Posts: 3,413 Karma: 13369310 Join Date: May 2008 Location: Launceston, Tasmania Device: Sony PRS T3, Kobo Glo, Kindle Touch, iPad, Samsung SB 2 tablet	Thanks to you all. I'll try quotation dash and see what happens. I presume the if the font family doesn't include quotation dash I won't see any dash at all?

11-06-2015, 03:02 AM	#7
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383099 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	On most devices, if a font doesn't contain a glyph, an empty square box will be displayed instead. I'd recommend against using a glyph which is not commonly present in fonts.

11-06-2015, 03:43 PM	#10
Jellby frumious Bandersnatch Posts: 7,546 Karma: 19001583 Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Spaniard in Sweden Device: Cybook Orizon, Kobo Aura	This is the main problem with Spanish books, where em-dashes (or quotation dashes) are used everywhere in dialogue... This "let's allow line break at either side of a dash, regardless of anything else" makes them look awful. Using quotation dashes is not a solution without embedding a font (and embedding a font is not a solution).

11-10-2015, 06:39 AM	#15
doubleshuffle Unicycle Daredevil Posts: 13,944 Karma: 185432100 Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Planet of the Pudding Brains Device: Aura HD (R.I.P. After six years the USB socket died.) tolino shine 3	What a pity. I thought I had successfully tested it in ADE, Bluefire and on my Kobo, but it's been a while. I was looking forward to using it in the collection I'm working on right now - keeping it for last due to the horrible look in Sigil - well, seems I can forget about that now. Although I think I'll do some more testing and if it really works like I remember, I might offer one version with and one without...

Advert

Advert