A bit of poetry CSS you may find useful

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Too often I encounter different pieces of poetry, in the same book, with varying indent amounts, I've become lazy now and called them simply "line2", "line3", etc.

Yep, exactly. There are sometimes 2 or 3 layers deep of indentation.

If you only have a basic <p>/<div> for each line... sure, that'll work for basic poems/lyrics, but then you'll get into a pickle later.

So I just tag every line with its own class:

• <p class="poem">
  
  • Normal negative indent.
• <p class="poem2">
  
  • Double negative indent.
• <p class="poem3">
  
  • Triple negative indent.

The cat jumped over the fox.
   The fox jumped over the cow.
      The cow jumped over the moon.

The dog barked.
   The cat meowed.
      The wolf howled.

... and Tex laughed.

Guess how the HTML markup would look? :P

Spoiler:

  <div class="poem">
    <div class="stanza">
      <p class="poem">The cat jumped over the fox.</p>
      <p class="poem2">The fox jumped over the cow.</p>
      <p class="poem3">The cow jumped over the moon.</p>
    </div>

    <div class="stanza">
      <p class="poem">The dog barked.</p>
      <p class="poem2">The cat meowed.</p>
      <p class="poem3">The wolf howled.</p>
    </div>

    <div class="stanza">
      <p class="poem">... and Tex laughed.</p>
    </div>
  </div>

- - -

Or... another trick I use (mostly in Indexes), is:

• I use class names + "two" or "three" on the end.

After you prettify, the HTML code naturally matches similar levels of indentation too:

Spoiler:

  <div class="poem">
    <div class="stanza">
      <p class="poem">The cat jumped over the fox.</p>
      <p class="poemtwo">The fox jumped over the cow.</p>
      <p class="poemthree">The cow jumped over the moon.</p>
    </div>

    <div class="stanza">
      <p class="poem">The dog barked.</p>
      <p class="poemtwo">The cat meowed.</p>
      <p class="poemthree">The wolf howled.</p>
    </div>

    <div class="stanza">
      <p class="poem">... and Tex laughed.</p>
    </div>
  </div>

See the Index out of the latest latest book I worked on:



Wow, that code brings a tear to my eye, and look how easy it is to read.

- - -

Complete Side Note: That was also the first book I ever ran across where the Index's subentries were actually in page order... usually all books are in alphabetical order. I was scratching my head for a while until I noticed the pattern.

[bookman156]

That was also the first book I ever ran across where the Index's subentries were actually in page order... usually all books are in alphabetical order. I was scratching my head for a while until I noticed the pattern.

That is odd, and bad I'd say, but that's their business.

Did you link up the page numbers with the text?

I've only ever created an index once, from scratch, for a book I wrote. It took me two solid months and I vowed never again. The publisher persuaded me I could do a better job than a pro indexer, which was probably true, and saved them money of course. Still, I had some fun with it, my favourite entry was:

Wen, King, supernumerary nipples of

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by bookman156

That is odd, and bad I'd say, but that's their business.

Nah, it actually made sense once I looked a little bit closer.

It allowed you to:

• Find a given topic/person.
• Get a quick outline/summary in "chronological order".

- - -

I did ultimately make the decision to split the index from "paragraph form":



into "indented form" though.

In the physical book, especially older books, paragraphs were done for page count reasons.

But in an ebook, there's no worry about how "tall" an index is. And indents are so much easier to read/skim.

Originally Posted by bookman156

Did you link up the page numbers with the text?

Nah, I don't tend to go out of my way to do that.

But I have written everything there is to know about RPNs (Real Page Numbers) over the years.

• 2021: "Indexing in SIGIL - How to add "See also...""
• 2020: "How to export indexes from indesign to epub"

Just type into your favorite search engine:

RPNs Tex2002ans site:mobileread.com
Index Tex2002ans site:mobileread.com
real page numbers Tex2002ans site:mobileread.com

and you'll find hundreds of topics where me+Hitch have discussed every single little detail of that.

Originally Posted by bookman156

I've only ever created an index once, from scratch, for a book I wrote. [...] The publisher persuaded me I could do a better job than a pro indexer, which was probably true, and saved them money of course.

No. Professional indexing is a completely different skillset from writing/editing, and I can understand WHY.

See the famous thread:

• 2017: "Sick of Amazon Kindle books without Page Numbers..."

where I covered that RPNs + cross-referencing/-linking + Indexes in extreme detail.

(Around that time, I spent months of work recreating/retypesetting a fully linkable Index [to the exact location within the text]... I still haven't finished that project.)

An author would most likely make a horrible Indexer, because you aren't looking at the book as an objective outsider.

An Indexer would be able to categorize keywords/terms/people + know how a typical reader may reference/tackle your book.

(When I spent months researching Indexing + reading documentation at the American Society for Indexing, I learned to appreciate the sadly neglected/brushed-aside skill.)

People (including me) tended to think:

• "There's no need for indexes in ebooks! Search does all of that and more!"
• "Look at Google!"

No, oh no... how wrong I was... lol.

- - -

Side Note: A month ago, I listened to this fantastic podcast episode:

• 99% Invisible #197: "Search and Ye Might Find"
  
  • + this article: Business Insider: "Why Search Sucks" by Adam Rogers

It, too, described how:

• librarians curate + teach you HOW to research effectively (similar to an Index).
• Where using find + search engines, you'll get a flood of crap.
  • so you learn how to use tricks like "site:" in order to effectively narrow down your searches.

Human-curation vs. raw search

(Similar to Indexes vs. Search/Concordances in ebooks.)

That podcast episode was one of the best ones I've heard in years + it put its finger on issues that have been niggling away at me for more than 10 years.

- - -

Side Note #2: If you want even more of my writings on how to take advantage + actually utilize the power of Indexes, see:

• 2020: "How to export indexes from indesign to epub" (especially Posts #40+#42)
• 2021: /r/books: "Anyone read "How to Read a Book"?"
  
  • In that comment, I linked to 3 more in-depth posts I wrote about "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler.

- - -

Originally Posted by bookman156

Still, I had some fun with it, my favourite entry was:

• Wen, King, supernumerary nipples of

One of my favorite terms is "supernumerary specimen":

For animals (and plants) it is always and invariably true that an increase in their number will encroach upon the available means of subsistence and eventually lead to overpopulation, to “supernumerary specimens,” as Mises has called them, which must be “weeded out” due to a lack of sustenance. Today, we know that as far as humans are concerned, this must not be so: no supernumerary specimens who are thus weeded out exist in modern, western societies. But for most of human life this was indeed the case.

Talking about that horrible Malthus/Malthusianism. :P

(Another great term is: "architectonic edifice".)

[bookman156]

I did ultimately make the decision to split the index from "paragraph form"

Ah, page number order looks okay in paragraph form, but in list form not so much. Interesting the difference that makes.

I certainly agree being an indexer is a different mindset to writer/editor. If I was a pro indexer I wouldn't have had to start the index over and over again after I realised I should have been indexing something halfway through. That said, I made a good job of it in the end. My publisher on that occasion 'persuaded' me by saying I knew the book better than an indexer. I agreed with that, but knew they were only saving themself some money. And that's the case with a lot of publishers, they don't want to employ an indexer if they can get the author to do it, and if they can't someone in-house will just do a rubbish index for it. Once I took the job on, I did it to my satisfaction, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to do another one. A friend of mine indexed the entire run of Fortean Times, I think it took him two years. Drove him round the bend, but an excellent index. Again, he knew the material, he wasn't a pro indexer.

[Keybounce]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Spoiler:

  <div class="poem">
    <div class="stanza">
      <p class="poem">The cat jumped over the fox.</p>
      <p class="poemtwo">The fox jumped over the cow.</p>
      <p class="poemthree">The cow jumped over the moon.</p>
    </div>

    <div class="stanza">
      <p class="poem">The dog barked.</p>
      <p class="poemtwo">The cat meowed.</p>
      <p class="poemthree">The wolf howled.</p>
    </div>

    <div class="stanza">
      <p class="poem">... and Tex laughed.</p>
    </div>
  </div>

See the Index out of the latest latest book I worked on:

Attachment 197185

Wow, that code brings a tear to my eye, and look how easy it is to read.

What are you doing writing readable HTML, with line breaks, in a format that readers can understand?

Don't you know that HTML has to have meaningless numbers for internal names, no linebreaks to save a few transmission bytes, and internal references so that page numbers are automatically recalculated rather than being explicit?

Sheesh, you'll put the programmers and database people out of a job.

I mean ... you might actually make something where *users* can specify how they want something to look. No, the *publisher* must be in control of how something looks on the user's device.

(I wish I was joking.)

Seriously, what do you use after "classthree"? "classquatroed"?

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Keybounce

Don't you know that HTML has to have meaningless numbers for internal names, no linebreaks to save a few transmission bytes, and internal references so that page numbers are automatically recalculated rather than being explicit?

You forgot the MBs and MBs of Javascript + complicated CSS3 calculations.

The more unreadable spaghetti you could make, the better!

Originally Posted by Keybounce

Seriously, what do you use after "classthree"? "classquatroed"?

four, five...

I use the same exact "negative indent" code for TOCs... and if you're going beyond 5 or 6 levels deep (<h5>/<h6>), there's probably something fundamentally misorganized in your text.

See my discussions in:

• 2017: "how to generate nested toc.ncx with more than 6 levels?"
  
  • Especially Post #21.
• 2016: "Collapsible TOC?"
• 2021: "Application slowness after 1000+ chapters"

I've never seen a poem go beyond 3... (although I don't really do much advanced poetry/lyrics.). If you start getting into extreme levels of indentation though, it would do extremely poorly on skinny devices (cellphones) on medium/large fonts.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by bookman156

Ah, page number order looks okay in paragraph form, but in list form not so much. Interesting the difference that makes.

I certainly agree being an indexer is a different mindset to writer/editor. If I was a pro indexer I wouldn't have had to start the index over and over again after I realised I should have been indexing something halfway through. That said, I made a good job of it in the end. My publisher on that occasion 'persuaded' me by saying I knew the book better than an indexer. I agreed with that, but knew they were only saving themself some money. And that's the case with a lot of publishers, they don't want to employ an indexer if they can get the author to do it, and if they can't someone in-house will just do a rubbish index for it. Once I took the job on, I did it to my satisfaction, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to do another one. A friend of mine indexed the entire run of Fortean Times, I think it took him two years. Drove him round the bend, but an excellent index. Again, he knew the material, he wasn't a pro indexer.

I've had numerous customers try to pull that one on me. "Oh, Hitch, you can do the index, you'll do just..." yeah, NO.

The indexers we use are actually trained in it. Took college courses in it. Worked at publishing houses, mags and rags, for decades. I know what it takes, to make a GOOD viable culled index. I know everything that there is to know, about trying to survive "indices" that are naught more than concordances (DO NOT get me started, Danger, Danger Will Robinson, Danger!) shoved toward us for inclusion for a book with these world's most worthless so-called indexes.

And OMG, you can hear and see Tex and me rant forEVER on the whole crackpot idea of trying to reverse-engineer indices. It boggles my brain that people think you can just push a g-damned button and Magic Happens. Nobody has to do anything! No typing in terms, phrases, no thinking about "also see" or this or that. No wondering if the Persian Cat in the first paragraph on page 183 is the intended target of that old index, versus the one in the 2nd or 4th para, or...is it the entire page? Because now, those three entries are on two, not one pages?

Listen, honestly, I'd love to read a book thoroughly, twice through and then work on an index. It would, in some ways, be a brain luxury cruise for me. But without being paid PROPER indexing compensation, I could never afford to do it.

When I get a book in and the customer tells me that he had it "edited" from Fiverr or worse, indexed from Fiverr. I always cringe. And it always boggles me that people will send a book to some unknown person, in another country, mind you (other than England, Canada, etc.--and yes, I'm being English-centric here because that's the market I know), for a bloody edit and then they're surprised when what comes back isn't great.

SHEESH!!!

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Lets say and index entry belongs to multiple places in a book. How do you handle the multiple back links you'd need?

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Lets say and index entry belongs to multiple places in a book. How do you handle the multiple back links you'd need?

Come on, JSWolf, you know the answer to this.

Hitch has described the "many-to-one" and "one-to-many" problem a thousand times.

Just type this into your favorite search engine:

many-to-one Hitch site:mobileread.com
Indexes Hitch site:mobileread.com
Glossaries Hitch site:mobileread.com

Even the famous thread in 2017 and 2019 where she answered that exact thing:

• 2017: "cross links randomly become footnotes"
• 2019: "Backlinks arrrrrrgh!"

Come on, you were even in most of these same threads!

Originally Posted by Hitch

[...] for a book with these world's most worthless so-called indexes.

And OMG, you can hear and see Tex and me rant forEVER on the whole crackpot idea of trying to reverse-engineer indices. It boggles my brain that people think you can just push a g-damned button and Magic Happens.

[...]

Heh, I second everything you say.

And, in my case, I've seen so many errors/typos/mistakes in "linked Indexes", it made me want to pull my hair out.

There are also way more complicated Indexes than just your simple:

• Term, ###.

(All of it was discussed to death in those threads.)

Anyway, we're getting way off track from poetry. :P

If JSWolf or others wants to start yet another Index discussion... probably best to create a new thread.

(But it's all been discussed to near-death... with not too many new tools/enhancements since.)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Come on, JSWolf, you know the answer to this.

I know I do. I was asking for others who may not know the answer. It's not always easy when you don't know and you sit there trying to figure out how to do it.

I know the best solution is to use a program to read that supports pop-ups.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I know I do. I was asking for others who may not know the answer. It's not always easy when you don't know and you sit there trying to figure out how to do it.

I know the best solution is to use a program to read that supports pop-ups.

Ooops, I meant to say, in my index rant, that vis: Fiverrs--to be fair, there are, boggling, the Real Deal there. There are editors, betas, etc. that do and have worked in the NYC Publishing biz; they have the street cred and they are fantastic. Those folks, sadly, are 99% never who I see used, by my customers. (I did buy a topflight beta read for one of my friends, though and wow, it's made a huge diff in her writing!).

So, not all Fiverrs are awful, and I oughtn't to have lumped them all in together. However, 99% of people go to Fiverr to save money. Nothing wrong with saving money, but when a "developmental edit" done in Chennai, India, is 1/10th the price of a proofread done in Boise Idaho, then you should expect that not everything is as it appears.

Hitch

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Hitch

[...] but when a "developmental edit" done in Chennai, India, is 1/10th the price of a proofread done in Boise Idaho, then you should expect that not everything is as it appears.

Few months ago, I stumbled upon this great podcast:

• "The Editing Podcast"

Lots of great info in there, for editors AND authors.

(One is a Non-Fiction editor, the other is a Fiction editor... and they've been in the business for decades, so they describe/tackle the topics from all angles.)

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Few months ago, I stumbled upon this great podcast:

• "The Editing Podcast"

Lots of great info in there, for editors AND authors.

(One is a Non-Fiction editor, the other is a Fiction editor... and they've been in the business for decades, so they describe/tackle the topics from all angles.)

GREAT that's a fantastic resource, thanks, Tex. (waving at you from the you-know-what.)

Hitch

[bookman156]

but when a "developmental edit" done in Chennai, India, is 1/10th the price of a proofread done in Boise Idaho, then you should expect that not everything is as it appears.

When I am taking on a copy-editing brief and the commissioning editor tells me they want a 'developmental edit' done on it what they are telling me is that the manuscript is all over the place and they expect me, in addition to copy-editing, to rescue it like a battlefield soldier wounded in a minefield, and they expect me to do it in a week. They're saying 'we've paid for it, save it from the bin'.

I should point out that the phrase 'developmental edit' in normal use secretly means 'get the author to write the book we want, not the book they want'. Just in case anyone was wondering about professional publishing.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by bookman156

When I am taking on a copy-editing brief and the commissioning editor tells me they want a 'developmental edit' done on it what they are telling me is that the manuscript is all over the place and they expect me, in addition to copy-editing, to rescue it like a battlefield soldier wounded in a minefield, and they expect me to do it in a week. They're saying 'we've paid for it, save it from the bin'.

I should point out that the phrase 'developmental edit' in normal use secretly means 'get the author to write the book we want, not the book they want'. Just in case anyone was wondering about professional publishing.

AMEN BROTHER!!!

People think that editors are ghostwriters, who will take some idea and magically extrude A Book.

It slays me every time I see/hear it.

Hitch