The end of "THE END"?

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

I know precisely what you mean. I don't use their (maddening) markup code, but I do like the idea of killing italics on currently common words (alibi, role, cafe, etc); killing hyphens on words we don't hyphenate any more (apologies to purists, but to-day with a hyphen is just irritating to me), and a bunch of other simplifications they use. So I steal the ideas, and use simple markup.

I'm in the *it depends* camp on hyphens. For instance, and you'll hate me, but if I get going on the Jerry Todd's and Poppy Ott's, the to-days are probably gonna stand. Because I grew up up with those books and it would feel downright ODD not to see them. But I'll think on it.

But in some books, you'll get a single or double instance of teen-ager or week-end or something like that, and I don't necessarily feel the need to preserve those. I do tend to go with the modern style of not italicizing punctuation. And I most definitely separate out my italics by vocal emphasis vs. visual emphasis.


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[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by graycyn

I'm in the *it depends* camp on hyphens. For instance, and you'll hate me, but if I get going on the Jerry Todd's and Poppy Ott's, the to-days are probably gonna stand. Because I grew up up with those books and it would feel downright ODD not to see them. But I'll think on it.

But in some books, you'll get a single or double instance of teen-ager or week-end or something like that, and I don't necessarily feel the need to preserve those. I do tend to go with the modern style of not italicizing punctuation. And I most definitely separate out my italics by vocal emphasis vs. visual emphasis.


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How do you separate the italics?

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Then there is em dashes with spaces (no).

If there isn't at least a tiny space it can mess up searching.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

If there isn't at least a tiny space it can mess up searching.

Which programs can get messed up via search? I've tested ADE and there is no problem there.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Which programs can get messed up via search? I've tested ADE and there is no problem there.

On amazon kindle devices

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

On amazon kindle devices

That's OK then.

But seriously, what happens when you search?

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But seriously, what happens when you search?

I'll have to check the next time I come across it, but I think not all ocurrances are found. Something similar happens with drop caps and other initial letter shenanigans.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

I'll have to check the next time I come across it, but I think not all ocurrances are found. Something similar happens with drop caps and other initial letter shenanigans.

I do understand drop caps as they are no longer part of the word.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I do understand drop caps as they are no longer part of the word.

That depends on how you create the drop-cap.

It wouldn’t be found if you put a <span> around the first letter, but if you just used the :first-letter pseudo selector to style it, then searches would find it with no problem.

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How do you separate the italics?

Simple,

<em>

for vocal emphasis,

<i>

for only visual.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How do you separate the italics?

Seriously?!?!? You want to open up this argument again?!?!?!?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Seriously?!?!? You want to open up this argument again?!?!?!?

Sure, why not. Nobody has yet to come up with a TTS that reads <em> and different then <i>. So why bloat the code with <em> when <i> will do perfectly well?

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

On amazon kindle devices

I didn't know that, but honestly, I'm with Jon on this. (Though I disagree about no spaces for the ellipsis character. )

I *hate* em-dashes with spaces. I'm not real crazy about en-dashes with spaces either, but it's tolerable.

Seems to me that if Amazon has a problem with em-dashes in their reading engine, said reading engine should get fixed, because an em-dash isn't exactly breaking news. They are in a LOT of books and have been for years and years. And a company in the business of selling ebooks ought to be able to figure out how to handle them with search, IMHO.

Besides, I just tried it with Dapple Gray and didn't notice any particular issue when searching. (KF8)

A lot of the big publishing houses use em-dashes without spaces, and if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me.

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sure, why not. Nobody has yet to come up with a TTS that reads <em> and different then <i>. So why bloat the code with <em> when <i> will do perfectly well?

There is this little phenomenon where technology continues to develop as years pass ... you know, once upon a time, we had no reason to discuss this issue, because THERE WERE NO EBOOKS or EREADERS and HTML5 did not exist yet.

By the way, TTS can, in some apps, actually pronounce foreign language words correctly if they are marked up with the appropriate language. So it's not *that* far of a jump to think that eventually, TTS/screen readers could emphasize a word as well.

If I want to take the time to create better semantics, why not? Who, exactly, does it harm? The average reader could care less about the code and it's not even that much bloat!

[elibrarian]

Originally Posted by graycyn

I didn't know that, but honestly, I'm with Jon on this. (Though I disagree about no spaces for the ellipsis character. )

I *hate* em-dashes with spaces. I'm not real crazy about en-dashes with spaces either, but it's tolerable.

This is to some extent language specific. IIRC j.p.s. is norwegian, and I would suspect they have the same "peculiarities" as we do in danish:

– Only one type of dash (you can use en- or em- as you please, as long as you use the same type consistently), and always surrounded by spaces – except of course in the beginning and end of a paragraph. (The emdash-like character sometimes used to signify dialog is a "horizontal bar", unicode &#x2015; – if correctly coded).

– Same goes for ellipsis, except where it acts as a stand-in for a missing part of a word.

Just to clarify …

Regards,

Kim