Need help/opinions with formatting

[Tango Mike]

I'm relatively new to Calibre and formatting my novel as an ebook, and have both mobi and epub files looking very good, but...

I'm using page breaks between chapters so that each one begins on a new page because that seems to be the most common ebook format. I've been told not to use multiple hard returns to space chapter headings down from the top of the page or to add space between the chapter heading and the first paragraph of the chapter. I'm doing that with styles in MS Word. This has created two issues with my current ebook versions.

First, with no control over how a reader will choose to view the book, I can't prevent situations in which a few words or lines of text at the end of a chapter appear at the top of the last page, leaving mostly blank space before the beginning of the next chapter. That seems to be something I have to accept if I want to use page breaks between chapters.

But if I were to eliminate the page breaks and use only the style function in Word to add space above and below my chapter headings, readers would still get a visual differentiation for chapter ends and starts, and I'd avoid the possibility of mostly empty last pages of chapters.

I don't know how common that is, and I'd like to hear what you think of that as a tactic for altering the appearance of the novel on the e-reader.

Second issue: two chapter transitions in my current mobi version when viewed on my Kindle for Mac have a completely blank page between the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next. I don't have a Kindle, so I can't determine if that would be the case on the reader itself. I've checked the source Word file for an extra hard return that shouldn't be there, or an extra page break, and have found none. Has anyone encountered this or a similar problem and found a solution?

I'd appreciate any comments on these two issues. Thanks in advance for your time.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Tango Mike

I'm relatively new to Calibre and formatting my novel as an ebook, and have both mobi and epub files looking very good, but...

First, with no control over how a reader will choose to view the book, I can't prevent situations in which a few words or lines of text at the end of a chapter appear at the top of the last page, leaving mostly blank space before the beginning of the next chapter. That seems to be something I have to accept if I want to use page breaks between chapters.

I am not a Word user (or expert):
The keywords are "Widows" and "Orphans" that control that.

But if I were to eliminate the page breaks and use only the style function in Word to add space above and below my chapter headings, readers would still get a visual differentiation for chapter ends and starts, and I'd avoid the possibility of mostly empty last pages of chapters.

I use Sigil to edit the EPUB.
I tend to work in the stylesheet and just set a bigger Top padding for a chapter heading class. I also prefer to use % (of screen) values to maintain 'balance' on different size displays.

I don't know how common that is, and I'd like to hear what you think of that as a tactic for altering the appearance of the novel on the e-reader.

I'd appreciate any comments on these two issues. Thanks in advance for your time.

[Tango Mike]

Thanks to theducks: I should have mentioned that widow/orphan control is turned off, and I don't know HTML, so I can't edit the epub or mobi files directly. My only option is to note the problem, revise the source Word file, and re-convert to assess the result.

[HarryT]

You mean, I hope, that you don't YET know HTML. As an ebook author, having at least a basic knowledge of HTML is one of the "tools of the trade" which it's essential to acquire.

I am very much in favour of a hard page break at the start of each chapter.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Tango Mike

Thanks to theducks: I should have mentioned that widow/orphan control is turned off, and I don't know HTML, so I can't edit the epub or mobi files directly. My only option is to note the problem, revise the source Word file, and re-convert to assess the result.

It (the control) should be turned ON with reasonable settings to STOP making those orphans.
HTML is simple in most cases, and you probably should not be using the extreme cases for books that will be used (read) on many devices.

CSS is simply a styling Master Control that can be used across many sections.
Want to make Chapter headings Bolder, adjust the CSS (assumes that the Chapters have a unique style class).

Word Conversions make terribly bulky CSS
Find some books you like the 'style' of here at MR and look at the (x)HTML Code and CSS (Sigil is great for this)

IMHO a simple (stylistically) book should have a stylesheet under 300 lines

[Ransom]

Hi Mike,

I'm learning new things too. Most of the html I know is more than decade old, and I only begrudgingly started using CSS (cascading style sheets) this year. I've spent most of my free-time the past ten years working with Flash, multi-track audio, and video. I've got probably 50 or 60 programs I use on a regular basis, so I just don't have time to be an expert on everything. The only HTML you really need to know for book formatting is fairly simple though, and I only use a couple of internal CSS styles, (one of which is for placing page breaks). That's really about all you need. But I'd encourage you to learn some HTML. Word generates some pretty bad, and overly-complicated, HTML code, and I've spent a lot of time fixing bad code from Gutenberg downloads by people who probably used Word to make their files.

It might help if you'd invest in a WYSIWYG type of HTML editor to get you started. It will generate most of the html code for you and then you can look at the code after making changes to the text here and there and see what it did to get an idea of what HTML is all about. I would estimate that 70% of everyone working in HTML started that way with something like Dreamweaver or Frontpage years ago. Then after that, they might graduate to a different HTML editor that's more text/code based once they get the hang of HTML. A lot of people stick with something like Dreamweaver for life though. It makes things much easier in my opinion. There are some free HTML WYSIWYG editors out there that work pretty well like SeaMonkey and Amaya.

"I've been told not to use multiple hard returns to space chapter headings down from the top of the page or to add space between the chapter heading and the first paragraph of the chapter."

There's no point in having spaces before the chapter title if you have a page break just before it (although I always have just one paragraph break). This is probably why some of those books you've encountered that have a blank page now and then before the start of a new chapter get like that--because someone had 10 or 15 paragraph breaks before the chapter start plus a page break. But I generally have two paragraph breaks after the chapter title before the first paragraph starts. That's just more pleasing to the eye I think.

"I can't prevent situations in which a few words or lines of text at the end of a chapter appear at the top of the last page, leaving mostly blank space before the beginning of the next chapter."

Hmm… maybe my brain is firing blanks today, but I don't understand the problem with that. Isn't that the way hard copy books are too?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Ransom

Hi Mike,
...
Hmm… maybe my brain is firing blanks today, but I don't understand the problem with that. Isn't that the way hard copy books are too?

Good typesetters do kerning, line spacing tweaks on the last full page and force a break before it would normally occur, to push more lines onto the next page.

Or the reverse

Are you going to notice a printed page margin change of less than a en? No

many of those tricks will not work with re-flow-able text. Widows and Orphans setting adjustment can help.

[Ransom]

Thanks. I gotta tell ya though that I've got bunches of books where a chapter's last page may only have a couple of lines on it. On the other hand, I don't read much of anything written after 1960, so it may be that typesetters weren't so concerned with that back then. Interesting. I'm not going to worry about it with my e-books though. Life's too short, and this is the first time I've ever heard anyone mention it. I really doubt that many readers care about it myself. At least I hope not!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Ransom

Thanks. I gotta tell ya though that I've got bunches of books where a chapter's last page may only have a couple of lines on it. On the other hand, I don't read much of anything written after 1960, so it may be that typesetters weren't so concerned with that back then. Interesting. I'm not going to worry about it with my e-books though. Life's too short, and this is the first time I've ever heard anyone mention it. I really doubt that many readers care about it myself. At least I hope not!

I don't know when book changed from Letterpress (cold type and Linotype) to Offset? I'm not excusing them .

[Ransom]

Boy I don't know; I just looked through three books randomly on my shelves and two out of three (both published in the 1990s, though written decades earlier) had some chapters where the last page only had one or two lines. One was a 1991 edition of 2001 A Space Odyssey on ROC Press, and the other was a 1996 reprint of Perelandra on Scribner. The third book was The Screwtape Letters on Oxford Press, and that one had no chapter end pages without a lot of printing on them.

It looks to me like even most of the big publishers don't seen concerned about how many lines are on a chapter's last page. Today is the first time I've ever heard of it. It's hard for me to believe anyone would think twice about it. What's the difference how many lines are on that page? Why would anyone care? I don't see how it would save paper costs.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Tango Mike

I'm using page breaks between chapters so that each one begins on a new page because that seems to be the most common ebook format.

This sounds like a good way of doing things.

Originally Posted by Tango Mike

I've been told not to use multiple hard returns to space chapter headings down from the top of the page or to add space between the chapter heading and the first paragraph of the chapter.

If you use H2 headings then this ought to be easy to accomplish with the bottom margin of the H2 property in CSS.

Originally Posted by Tango Mike

First, with no control over how a reader will choose to view the book, I can't prevent situations in which a few words or lines of text at the end of a chapter appear at the top of the last page, leaving mostly blank space before the beginning of the next chapter. That seems to be something I have to accept if I want to use page breaks between chapters.

This is something you must accept in ePub or Mobi. When using a ereaders two things stand out folks can choose any size font changing the number of screens used to display a page and screens are different sizes on different readers, so controlling widows and orphans is just not the same as with the printed book.

Also there are Forums here for epub and mobi formats that might help.

Good Luck with your book.

[Tango Mike]

This is a great discussion and thanks to all who have shared their time and expertise. I appreciate your point about the usefulness of learning at least the basics of HTML and I plan to do that. But for now, I've spent far too much time and effort to start over again with this novel. Using the original source Word manuscript formatted for submission to agents, I've got the .mobi and .epub conversions done and uploaded to KDP and PubIt with no major problems.

Early in the process I was advised not to use multiple hard returns to space chapter headings down from the top of the page or to add space between the heading and the main body text. This may be an issue only with Word, but that method can create unwanted gaps in the text. The solution is to use the Heading 1 style and specify the amount of space above and below the heading you want in the paragraph spacing section of the format menu. This works exactly as intended.

The impetus for starting this thread came from using the Calbre ebook viewer and noticing that while the .epub version includes the page breaks between the last page of a chapter and the first page of the next, the .mobi version does not. It shows the space above and below the chapter headings, but does not shift the chapter heading to a new page. I'm using Kindle for Mac and Adobe Digital Editions to preview the files before uploading to KDP and PubIt, and both versions do include the page breaks as I inserted them in the source Word document.

It occurred to me that without the page breaks, the spacing between chapters would be uniform throughout the ebook. This would avoid any mostly blank pages, and I wondered what forum members thought about using that as a formatting technique. Subsequent to starting this thread, a writer friend suggested that new-page chapter starts were important because they ease navigation using the table of contents and provide a definitive visual clue to the reader.

The issue Word's widow/orphan control, however, carries more than one implication. If I let Word decide whether to extend the text to the bottom of one page or leave the last line or two blank, it can create uneven page bottoms. The fact that font size can be changed on the e-reader trumps any efforts I might make to avoid mostly blank pages prior to chapter starts, but forcing the text to fill every page with the same number of lines is under my control if I turn the Word function off.

That said, it's important to note that viewing the files with Kindle for Mac and Adobe Digital Editions can artificially highlight both of these issues if I use full screen and/or multiple column options because it puts pages side-by-side rather than one at a time. With that in mind, I think it's best to use the page breaks and let the last pages of chapters do as they will.

I realize this is a Calibre forum, but in response to Ransom regarding print books, I've been told by more than one graphic designer that last pages of chapters with only a few words or even a line or two are considered "amateur." That's what I am, of course, but I'd rather not advertise it.

The solution is to manipulate the text on the previous page to eliminate the small amount of text that wraps to the mostly empty last page with small, unapparent changes in font size, leading, kerning, or margins. I've also found that any paragraphs in the previous chapter whose last lines contain only a word or two can usually be edited to eliminate the last line, and each one of those "pulls" a line off the last page of the chapter.

Thanks again to all who participated in this thread. I've learned a lot and really appreciate your time and expertise.

[Ransom]

The impetus for starting this thread came from using the Calbre ebook viewer and noticing that while the .epub version includes the page breaks between the last page of a chapter and the first page of the next, the .mobi version does not.

That's true; calibre's viewer seems to ignore page breaks altogether with mobi files. It would be nice if they'd fix that.

It occurred to me that without the page breaks, the spacing between chapters would be uniform throughout the ebook.

I sometimes wonder about the wisdom of creating page breaks too. After all, many hard-copy books are published exactly like that where a chapter will end and a new one will simply start after a set number of spaces. It wastes less paper that way. And about half the files you download from Gutenberg don't have page breaks in them. Nobody gives a darn. But having said that, I like having a new chapter start on a nice clean page in my reader. Looks nicer to me. But it ain't a big deal.

With that in mind, I think it's best to use the page breaks and let the last pages of chapters do as they will.

I'll second that. I really think you got some bumb advice concerning that. I really don't think there's a single publisher out there who thinks twice about how many lines are on the last page of a chapter. I already mentioned a couple I opened at random. But the thing with e-books is that the lines on pages change whenever you jump through the book. I'm not sure, but maybe it depends on the reader being used too. I only have a Kindle. I've noticed that if I end a chapter that has maybe two paragraphs on it, and then jump back to a previous chapter to reference something, and then jump back to where I was, that last page will now only have one paragraph or maybe it will have three now. And if I go to the TOC and click on any chapter from there, and then hit the back button, the last page of the previous chapter will always be completely full of lines!

So I'm not sure, but I don't think you can do anything to force a certain number of lines on that final chapter page anyway in an e-book. Maybe a Kobo or Sony or a Nook does things differently though.

[JSWolf]

Here is what I suggest.

Separate each chapter into a single XML file. That way you will have full control over how the chapter header will look. Also, it will help you conform to the mobile ADE standard which is needed for readers.

In the CSS in the body style add in...

body {
    windows: 0;
    orphans: 0
}

This will turn off orphans and widows and make things a lot more uniform.

Since you are using Word, you may have to go into the ePub and clean it up to remove the code that Word adds in that's excessive or incorrect for ePub. For example, all the font family in CSS that have no use. And other things.

Make sure your code validates with FlightCrew. After that, view it in ADE and see how it looks. Make sure your external ToC has all the entries needed for a proper ToC.

Also, make sure the margins are not too large. 5-10px left/right at most.