06-02-2019, 03:40 PM | #1 |
Wizard
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ellipses, with or without spaces?
How do you guys handle ellipses?
I find the ones provided by the entity/fonts are too closely spaced; it hardly looks like an ellipsis to me. That could be because I'm used to seeing the three periods separated by full spaces. And if I do use them then using full spaces before or after makes them look even more squashed. At the moment I'm trying a sequence of: thin non-breaking space, dot, thin non-breaking space, dot, thin non-breaking space, dot, thin space. I.e., thin non breaking space before each dot and the last one followed by a thin space. I'm using a non-breaking thin space at the beginning because the book I'm working on uses ellipses for a pause so I don't want it to be at the beginning of a line. |
06-02-2019, 07:08 PM | #2 |
Wizard
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Hmph. The Kobo doesn't display those thin non-breaking spaces properly, just little rectangles with question marks in them.
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06-02-2019, 08:07 PM | #3 |
Grand Sorcerer
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A safe bet is just 3 dots in a row. No space. This still looks better that the single digit ellipse. Of course use 4 dots if the ellipse ends a sentence.
Dale |
06-02-2019, 08:13 PM | #4 |
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You need to sideload and use a better font which actually contains those "special" space glyphs. It sounds like the font you're currently using doesn't have them.
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06-02-2019, 09:24 PM | #5 | |
Wizard
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See these 2 topics for extremely detailed discussion:
break/no-break and other spaces [old thread] non breaking spaces (* and *) automatically removed I also believe I referenced a Jellby post where he discusses all the ins-and-outs of when to attach ellipses before/after with non-breaking spaces (IIRC there were at least 5 different cases you'll run across). Quote:
Code:
Example of a 4-dot ellipsis. . . . It also is the only way that consistently:
And like was already mentioned, using rarer spaces is probably going to get you the blank squares or ? to appear everywhere. Last edited by Tex2002ans; 06-02-2019 at 09:26 PM. |
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06-02-2019, 09:30 PM | #6 |
Wizard
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A true elipsis is a single character. They do often seem overly narrow to eyes used to seeing the three periods cheat. If you use 3 periods, they should not have spaces between them. Personally, when I use the cheat and it ends a sentence, I prefer to separate then period following the elipsis with a space, thin space when using a decent typographic system and targeting print output.
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06-02-2019, 09:43 PM | #7 | ||
Wizard
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Look at Post #12 in the topic above where I used some different fonts on MobileRead. You can see the inconsistency in ellipsis spacing in different fonts.
When readers are fully in control of font selection... you can see where issues could arise. Quote:
That hack works in InDesign and other visual-only output, but that's a no-go in ebooks. Quote:
Sadly, you'll still run into many cases where the previous character could get broken from the attached punctuation. Last edited by Tex2002ans; 06-02-2019 at 09:47 PM. |
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06-02-2019, 10:31 PM | #8 |
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I still follow the information from this old thread to create "handmade" ellipses.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...ghlight=HELLIP Granted, I am pretty much only working with vintage books, and the modern glyph often just does not look right there. Purely a personal preference. I also get annoyed that in some fonts, unless you have super-excellent eyesight (which I do not) the ellipsis glyph is so narrow that it is almost indistinguishable from an underscore! Last edited by GrannyGrump; 06-02-2019 at 11:11 PM. |
06-02-2019, 11:08 PM | #9 |
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PS --- RbnJrg posted a solution to prevent trailing ellipses and em dashes and other punctuation from breaking off as orphans onto a separate line.
See Post # 17 on this thread: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...=NOWRAP&page=2 CSS: Code:
.nowrap { text-indent: 0; display: inline-block; } But you should not use the span on long words, as it prevents hyphenation, and might cause large gaps along the right-hand margin. |
06-03-2019, 05:18 AM | #10 |
frumious Bandersnatch
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"display: inline-block" used to be outside the ePub 2 specification, and not supported by some readers. I don't know what's the status now, but I wouldn't rely on it.
My preferred (possibly outdated) solutions: In English: . . . (adding extra on the side depending on the surrounding punctuation.) In Spanish: ... (because that's the correct typesetting of an ellipsis in Spanish, got to love its simplicity ) |
06-03-2019, 06:13 AM | #11 |
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I'm a wee bit puzzled here. If it's an ellipsis, well, then use an ellipsis, at least if you're producing epubs for others than yourself or commercially. The reader will probably have his own font-preferences, and some of the solutions here will look somewhat out of proportion in certain fonts, to my eye at least.
Not to mention that screenreaders probably won't recognize dot-space-dot-space-dot or whatever as an ellipsis … Regards, Kim |
06-03-2019, 07:37 AM | #12 | |
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Quote:
Of course if you're only producing books for yourself you can do whatever you like. |
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06-03-2019, 08:46 AM | #13 | |
A Hairy Wizard
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Quote:
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06-03-2019, 08:53 AM | #14 | |||
Wizard
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Quote:
Jellby's posts were the ones that initially taught me all the ellipsis edge cases, and I still refer to them so many years later. Quote:
There's also the edge cases of ellipses and other punctuation: ,... ...! ...? ?... Quote:
it just takes a few pauses as it parses each period. Code:
Example 4-dot ellipsis. . . . And this is a second sentence. Example 4-dot ellipsis.… And this is a second sentence. Example 4-dot ellipsis…. And this is a second sentence. Code:
Example 4-dot ellipsis. (Pause) (Pause) (Pause) And this is a second sentence. Hmmm, interesting. Which TTS were you using? Last edited by Tex2002ans; 06-03-2019 at 09:03 AM. |
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06-03-2019, 09:20 AM | #15 |
A Hairy Wizard
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In the off case where you are trying to portray missing text, then you can use whatever convention you wish: . . . . . , [text missing], or whatever.
There is no way in heck you can accommodate for every reader/device/font/user spacing/etc. so don't even try. Use the grammatically correct symbol and IF the user doesn't like the way it looks, they can complain to the reader/device manufacturer. Chances are they won't even notice...heck, they don't even notice - or care - when there is really bad grammar. They are certainly not going to be as picky as you, the epub designer, are about how thin it may appear. Last edited by Turtle91; 06-03-2019 at 09:24 AM. |
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