Should I use *soft hyphens to hyphenate large words

[rhyous]

About the soft hyphen character sequence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_hyphen

Questions:

1. Should I use the soft hyphen character sequence?
2. If so, what should be the minimum word size that I should hyphenate?
   I think 12 and greater. I only have about 550 words in my whole novel that are of length 12 or greater. So it won't affect the size noticably.

Why am I asking? Here are the details:

I have an eBook published in most places: (Kindle, Nook, iBook, Kobo, etc.)

I was reading a book on Kindle and found a line that just ended early despite the fact that everything is justified. I checked my own novel and sure enough I found an instance of this (well multiple instances actually), but it depends on the font size.

Here is an example from my novel:

As  if  the  memory  were  my
own, the first time her
grandfather gifted her flashed
through my mind.

So the second line ends early.

Then only way I can find to fix this is to use the soft hyphen. I have tested the soft hyphen and it works on my Kindle app on my PC, my Galaxy S4 phone, and my Kindle Fire HDs.

PHP Code:

­* 


Note sure why this forum adds the extra "*". I know the soft hyphen doesn't have a "*".

So if I change the word grandfather to have the soft hyphen, this is fixed on Kindle.

PHP Code:

grand*­father 


To me, it won't make my novel more

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by rhyous

Note sure why this forum adds the extra "*". I know the soft hyphen doesn't have a "*".

You are using the PHP tag, instead of the CODE tag.

Originally Posted by rhyous

[*]Should I use the soft hyphen character sequence?

I wouldn't recommend it at all.

I know that this soft hyphen question has come up before (and OF COURSE when I do a search I can't find exactly what I was looking for), but here are a few topics showing off what might happen when soft hyphens go wrong:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28108

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28139

Those devices that don't have the soft hyphen included in their character sets will usually show up as a ? or a blank box. This will ruin the reading experience.

The soft hyphen can also mess up searching in some cases, and/or interfere with the hyphenation algorithm (if the device has its own built-in hyphenation).

I would just leave justification/hyphenation up to the device itself. Those devices that do not include hyphenation (almost all older ereaders), and/or crappy justification algorithms... that is just too bad.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

You are using the PHP tag, instead of the CODE tag.



I wouldn't recommend it at all.

I know that this soft hyphen question has come up before (and OF COURSE when I do a search I can't find exactly what I was looking for), but here are a few topics showing off what might happen when soft hyphens go wrong:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28108

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28139

Those devices that don't have the soft hyphen included in their character sets will usually show up as a ? or a blank box. This will ruin the reading experience.

The soft hyphen can also mess up searching in some cases, and/or interfere with the hyphenation algorithm (if the device has its own built-in hyphenation).

I would just leave justification/hyphenation up to the device itself. Those devices that do not include hyphenation (almost all older ereaders), and/or crappy justification algorithms... that is just too bad.

For the love of heaven, stay away from the soft-hyphen. It will lose you more readers than it shall gain, and the manual labor you're talking about is MASSIVE.

Hitch

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by Hitch

For the love of heaven, stay away from the soft-hyphen. It will lose you more readers than it shall gain, and the manual labor you're talking about is MASSIVE.

Actually, there's a Calibre Hyphenate This! plug-in that does a great job, however, I wouldn't recommend using it for ePubs, because, as others have already pointed out, most ADE/RMSDK based devices don't support soft-hyphens and readers that are not based on ADE/RMSDK often have built-in hyphenation support.

[exaltedwombat]

Forget it, you're opening a can of worms. Some readers do their own hyphenation, some don't. Owners of the ones that don't are used to ungainly line-breaks.

[DiapDealer]

Add another "nay" vote to the pile.

If ragged lines or rivers of white bother a reader, they'll either get a reader that supports hyphenation or take care of polluting all of their ebooks with soft-hyphens themselves.

[DaleDe]

And some of the readers I have used (ADE based) support soft hyphens but then get it wrong by splitting but not including the hyphen itself.

Dale

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by rhyous

I was reading a book on Kindle and found a line that just ended early despite the fact that everything is justified.

This is just normal behavior. I don't think I've ever read a Kindle book that didn't contain one or more short lines.

It results from a 2012 (perhaps early 2013) change in the Kindle conversion, in an effort to get rid of extra-wide gaps between words when 100% justification is forced.

More recently (I can't really date these changes, but can only go by when I noticed them) the Kindle conversion will break a line following a hyphenation. Formerly that wasn't the case, and I developed the habit of getting rid of hyphens whenever that wouldn't cause rank confusion. I think the same thing is now true of em dashes. Again, I had developed the practice of using British style, that of using a space followed by an en dash followed by another space. I think this is now unnecessary.

[rhyous]

I will keep this in the back of my mind for now.

I wish the Kindle render tool would just handle this, but it doesn't.

Perhaps doing this for Kindle only wouldn't be so bad. Kindle is the only reader that really sells a lot of copies anyway and its the one I most care about looking professional.

The plugin looks nice, but I am not sure it does what I want. I want to only add hyphens to words 12 characters or larger and I only want to add one hyphen, not one for each syllable. In my novel, that would only be 550 words.

Thank you for your responses.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by rhyous

The plugin looks nice, but I am not sure it does what I want. I want to only add hyphens to words 12 characters or larger and I only want to add one hyphen, not one for each syllable.

You can customize the behavior of the Hyphenate This! plug-in by changing the Skip words shorter than value. However, I don't know whether it'll add only one soft-hyphen or more per word.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by rhyous

I will keep this in the back of my mind for now.

I wish the Kindle render tool would just handle this, but it doesn't.

Perhaps doing this for Kindle only wouldn't be so bad. Kindle is the only reader that really sells a lot of copies anyway and its the one I most care about looking professional.

The plugin looks nice, but I am not sure it does what I want. I want to only add hyphens to words 12 characters or larger and I only want to add one hyphen, not one for each syllable. In my novel, that would only be 550 words.

Thank you for your responses.

but you have no idea what font settings a kindle reader will select on THEIR kindle - if they alter their font size / font compression options then their lines won't end where you think they should end anyway. ( unless you plan to test all possible permutations ??? )..
as for "kindle is the only reader that really sells....", I think Apple, Kobo, Nook, Sony , and all the other android tablet makers would beg to differ.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by cybmole

but you have no idea what font settings a kindle reader will select on THEIR kindle - if they alter their font size / font compression options then their lines won't end where you think they should end anyway. ( unless you plan to test all possible permutations ??? )..
as for "kindle is the only reader that really sells....", I think Apple, Kobo, Nook, Sony , and all the other android tablet makers would beg to differ.

I was going to post that last night, but I decided to give up. Y'know, if he wants to sit there and hyphenate the thing...{shrug}. Given our client list, if I actually thought this mattered, we'd be doing it, but we're not. If I wrote a book that I thought was the next big NYTimes Bestseller, I wouldn't do it. FWIW.

Hitch

[exaltedwombat]

Originally Posted by cybmole

as for "kindle is the only reader that really sells....", I think Apple, Kobo, Nook, Sony , and all the other android tablet makers would beg to differ.

I don't know what it's like elsewhere, but here in the UK it's becoming increasingly impractical to self-publish anywhere except the Kindle Store. Or maybe Smashwords, if you don't mind the format restrictions and being listed alongside a load of porn.