Amazon 'suppresses' book with too many hyphens

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by tompe

Will the minus mess up dictionary look-up?

I have seen a lot of dictionary frustration when there is wrong punctuation connected at the end or beginning of a word. Usually it is with multiple dots (I think) or dashes without space connecting to the next word. Well it looks like a dash, but not sure if that is technically a minus, a soft or a hard hyphen.

Probably not a soft hyphen, as those should only show up at the end of the line as needed. When I have problems getting the word selected right it is mostly in the middle of a line.

[drjenkins]

Wikipedia has a lot to say about dashes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash

They warn not to confuse dashes with hyphens and minus signs, for example. It turns out there are more dashes than the em dash and en dash I'm familiar with.

The hyphen rates an even longer and more detailed article than the dash.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphen

In terms of an orthographic concept, the hyphen is a single entity. In terms of character encoding and display, that entity is represented by any of several characters and glyphs (including hard hyphens, soft or optional hyphens, and nonbreaking hyphens), depending on the context of use.

Now I fell badly about just using the minus key willy nilly.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

There's a lot more to the story, yes. It turns out he was hard coding a minus sign in place of a hyphen.
http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/1...emicolon-next/

The BBC article suggests that he was actually using an em dash instead of a hyphen. If that really is the case, that's pretty horrible formatting, and needs to be corrected.

[HomeInMyShoes]

I'm guessing it was a global search and replace that went as well as global search and replace ever does.

[HarryT]

This appears to be a bit of a "non-story", to be honest. Amazon routinely take down books with significant formatting issues, and personally I'd consider using dashes rather than hyphens to be a reasonably significant formatting problem. I really think the author is being a little disingenuous in claiming not to understand why it was done.

[WillAdams]

Originally Posted by tompe

Will the minus mess up dictionary look-up?

Yes. I used the actual characters in my post --- try pasting those characters into the middle of words and then searching.

[Atunah]

This was posted also on KBoards by the author and when I got a sample on my kindle, I posted there how the hyphen words were hyphened again and messed with the flow on the kindle. It just looked weird and I can't even recall having seen hyphenated words at the end of lines in kindle books before. I may be dreaming this, but I have used a kindle since 2008. I hope I am making sense here. I am not talking about him using hyphenated words only, but the formatting on the kindle did a double hyphenation at end of line it never done on my kindles before.

So yeah, it was bad formatting.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Atunah

This was posted also on KBoards by the author and when I got a sample on my kindle, I posted there how the hyphen words were hyphened again and messed with the flow on the kindle. It just looked weird and I can't even recall having seen hyphenated words at the end of lines in kindle books before. I may be dreaming this, but I have used a kindle since 2008. I hope I am making sense here. I am not talking about him using hyphenated words only, but the formatting on the kindle did a double hyphenation at end of line it never done on my kindles before.

So yeah, it was bad formatting.

Kindles don't "do" hyphenation on the fly. Not with an internal algorithm anyway. That's why you often get large gaps between words; and at the end of some lines. Soft hyphens, however, will be rendered (at the end of lines) if they're included in the markup. If double-hyphens were appearing at the end of lines, I'm guessing there were soft hyphens used in combination with hard hyphens (and/or double soft hyphens).

Does anyone know if the Hyphenate This calibre plugin will/can (under certain circumstances) insert soft hyphens before or after the hard hyphens in compound words?

This sounds mostly like sour grapes after a book got pulled because of reader/consumer general formatting complaints. I've seen even "big" name authors have ebooks yanked after similar complaints. Fix it and resubmit it.

[Shades]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Kindles don't "do" hyphenation on the fly. Not with an internal algorithm anyway. That's why you often get large gaps between words; and at the end of some lines.

Do people actually prefer huge gaps between words over hyphenation of the last word in the line? To me it just seems to throw off the balance and forces me out of the story. I can handle hyphenation of a word at the end without skipping a beat, but gaps annoy me.

Overdoing it on the hyphens though is probably not a good idea. Unless the word needs hyphenation, shouldn't it be left to the software to "flow" the text on the screen?

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Shades

Do people actually prefer huge gaps between words over hyphenation of the last word in the line? To me it just seems to throw off the balance and forces me out of the story. I can handle hyphenation of a word at the end without skipping a beat, but gaps annoy me.

Overdoing it on the hyphens though is probably not a good idea. Unless the word needs hyphenation, shouldn't it be left to the software to "flow" the text on the screen?

I actually prefer left justifed over either, but if I can't have that, I'd like the reader software to do the hyphenation. Why would the author/formatter ever be inserting hyphens into the text? Does he/she know what size font I use?

Shari

[ApK]

Originally Posted by shalym

I actually prefer left justifed over either, but if I can't have that, I'd like the reader software to do the hyphenation. Why would the author/formatter ever be inserting hyphens into the text? Does he/she know what size font I use?

Shari

It's possible that the issue is concerning only hyphenated-terms: techno-babble, forget-me-nots, and what-have-yous. Not end-of-line hyphenation.

I asked this earlier but not sure if anyone here knows.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by shalym

Why would the author/formatter ever be inserting hyphens into the text? Does he/she know what size font I use?

They may not have. It sounds like this particular author was using the larger em-dashes in some compound words. I was just responding to a previous poster's description of the book and trying to speculate what may have caused double-hyphens at the end of some lines.

Em-dashes where normal hyphens should go would definitely mess with my reading experience. Same as using periods where commas should be would. Messes with the flow of traffic when the signals are switched about.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by shalym

I actually prefer left justifed over either, but if I can't have that, I'd like the reader software to do the hyphenation. Why would the author/formatter ever be inserting hyphens into the text? Does he/she know what size font I use?

Shari

The hyphens we're talking about in this case are not hyphens within words, but hyphenated phrases: things like "fruit-bearing", "good-natured", etc.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The hyphens we're talking about in this case are not hyphens within words, but hyphenated phrases: things like "fruit-bearing", "good-natured", etc.

But even those should be hyphenated at the end of line, just treat them like soft hyphens that are there for a possible hyphenation. With the difference that they show the hyphen even in the middle of the line. Things that should never be hyphenated at the end of line, such as 3-D, should render with a hyphen, but inability to split up at the end a line. I believe that using a dash instead is a poor way to force non-hyphenation.


Edit: really funny, MR did split up your fruit-bearing as fruit-
bearing in my quote as it should. Depending on screen size.

[HarryT]

It's not merely a poor way; it's just plain wrong!