Punctuation rules of thumb?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

h3 + p, p.SceneBreak + p, div.ChapterDivision + p {text-indent:0; margin-top 2em}

All works fine for me. However, don't forget to check that your target device/app supports this kind of standard styling...

For a scene break,you don't want to use a margin-top. It doesn't work. When you have the space at the end of the page, the space gets lost. Use padding-top: 2em; as the space is not lost.

Instead of using just space or a graphic or * * * (looks awful), I use an <hr/>. The following code and it works very well.

hr {
  margin-top: 1em;
  margin-right: 40%;
  margin-bottom: 0.9em;
  margin-left: 40%;
  border-top: 2px solid;
}

Baen books does something I find just plain wrong. They indent the first paragraph of a chapter and the paragraph after a scene break. This is something I really dislike.

Then there are the books that don't indent the paragraph after some offset text. Again that just looks wrong because this is not a new scene.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's time to get with current rules of typography.

US rules are not the only ones. Also as stated earlier, the en dash vs em dash for bracketing and single vs double quotes are not universal in either direction in many countries. Any one novel wants to be consistent.
We use double quotes for speech, em dash for attribution or broken off speech and en dashes with spaces for bracketing as we are in Ireland. But you can find UK books the same. Personally I think a space at opening dash and after closing dash would work like (brackets), but I've never seen it and so it looks odd. Usually em with no spaces or en with a space on both sides.
We recommend the USA ‘Oxford comma’ before the ‘and’ at the end of a list only if it's ambiguous rather than always or never.
But very many things are a question of taste and context hence we have Style Guides.
The worst was my 1960s and 1970s English teachers prescriptively applying Victorian and also Latin rules (which are largely irrelevant) to English Grammar as well as simply made up daft rules that might apply to a script for the stage, but not to ordinary prose.
There was also too much emphasis on Formal Writing and Journalistic Reporting rather than anything relating to fiction or dialogue.


There is no good reason for the rest of the world to adopt Webster's spellings and one particular set of USA punctuation rules.

Also some rules like smaller spacing between a number and units, or small caps for certain abbreviation work 100% for paper but erratically for ebooks and web pages. Early ebooks on the Palm were little better than a proportional version of a terminal or typewriter!

[JSWolf]

@Quoth if you were going to standardize on a set of punctuation rules and use these rules world wide, which rules would you go with?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

@Quoth if you were going to standardize on a set of punctuation rules and use these rules world wide, which rules would you go with?

You want to make books be like an International US food franchise?

It's a crazy idea.
-> Different Cultures
-> Different Languages
-> Printed Newspapers & website versions, novels-Fiction, comic book speech bubbles. Formal writing also has different styles per application and country.

It's like saying everyone should wear the same clothes, have the same jewellery options, hairstyles, range of food, layout of houses etc. Or the same Digital TV standard.

Also English readers outside the USA have no difficulty reading USA 19th to 21st C, fiction and news reporting. US Books are largely published as-is over the last 150 years in UK. Yet many publishers obviously think the USA public is stupid and uneducated so they have to edit a USA market version. I know many USA people. All prefer the UK & Irish books to be original and can understand them.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

@Quoth if you were going to standardize on a set of punctuation rules and use these rules world wide, which rules would you go with?

I'd say any such plan wouldn't last long:
https://m.xkcd.com/927/

Fortunately, the charging one has been solved now that we've all standardized on mini-USB. Or is it micro-USB? Shit.

Add USB-C

[AlanHK]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Compose --- = — em dash
I must add that to our inhouse style guide with a warning where hyphen, en, em and minus are explained.

Good luck with that. One of the first things I do when I get a new ms is check all the hyphens and dashes (and quotemarks and ellipses).

I see incorrect dash/hyphens all the time in professionally published books now.
And almost every ebook.
The hot lead typesetters are turning in their graves....

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AlanHK

Good luck with that. One of the first things I do when I get a new ms is check all the hyphens and dashes (and quotemarks and ellipses).

I see incorrect dash/hyphens all the time in professionally published books now.
And almost every ebook.
The hot lead typesetters are turning in their graves....

What sort of errors do you find?

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

For a scene break,you don't want to use a margin-top. It doesn't work. When you have the space at the end of the page, the space gets lost. Use padding-top: 2em; as the space is not lost.

Instead of using just space or a graphic or * * * (looks awful), I use an <hr/>. The following code and it works very well.

hr {
  margin-top: 1em;
  margin-right: 40%;
  margin-bottom: 0.9em;
  margin-left: 40%;
  border-top: 2px solid;
}

Baen books does something I find just plain wrong. They indent the first paragraph of a chapter and the paragraph after a scene break. This is something I really dislike.

Then there are the books that don't indent the paragraph after some offset text. Again that just looks wrong because this is not a new scene.

Jon -

Please don't take a 1.5 year old post out of context...it confuses people. Also, you missed the point of my post again. The post was to say that multiple selectors, separated by a comma, worked fine in all the devices I have tried. It was not to get back to your personal preference about using padding instead of margin.

OBTW - just to point out - you are arguing to use padding-top instead of margin-top, but then your example <hr> uses margin....


If anyone cares, there are several images that show how padding gives extra space at the top of a page, vs. margin, which doesn't. Some people may want that space at the top of a page, some may not. Some may just prefer an asterism or a fleur. (hey that rhymed ) It is up to the author/publisher to determine which css they wish to use... that thread goes into greater detail about the pros/cons of margin vs. padding vs. asterisms for section breaks.

[Turtle91]

For full clarity - since the post you referenced was so old -

I also use the <hr/> to denote scene breaks. Apparently, that is the standard for assistive technology to determine scene breaks (or at least it was when I read the article last year...)
It is possible to fancy-up the <hr> to include a fleuron, or asterisks, not just a horizontal line:

HTML:
<hr class="ChDiv"/>

CSS:
hr.ChDiv {
  border: none; 
  margin: 1.25em auto; 
  height: .5em;
  background: transparent url("../Images/fleur.gif") no-repeat center;
  background-size: auto 100%;
  overflow: hidden;
  page-break-inside: avoid;
  break-inside: avoid;
}

The margin can be adjusted as necessary to complement the image size.

The height can be switched to "width" (with corresponding switch in background size) to accommodate taller vs. wider fleurs.
eg.
width: 3em;
background-size: 100% auto;

You can also include strings if you like:

hr.ChDiv {
  margin: 1.5em 0; 
  text-align: center; 
  letter-spacing: 1em;
  height:1em; 
  border:none; 
  background-color:transparent}

hr.ChDiv:before {content: "***"}
-or-
hr.ChDiv:before {content: "•••"}

or even MORE fancy: (taken from MDN webdocs)

hr.ChDiv {
    border: none;
    border-top: 3px double #333;
    color: #333;
    overflow: visible;
    text-align: center;
    height: 5px;
}

hr.ChDiv:after {
    background: #fff;
    content: '§';
    padding: 0 4px;
    position: relative;
    top: -13px;
}

Be careful though, some older devices might not support the "content" option for use of strings... it seems to work fine on my ePub 2 books. YMMV

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

@Quoth if you were going to standardize on a set of punctuation rules and use these rules world wide, which rules would you go with?

None. Even for your quotation marks fetish, take a look at the Wikipedia Quotation marks entry for the sheer variety used in different countries.

[Turtle91]

And, yes Jon, you can even include CSS that automatically non-indents paragraphs following section breaks, or headers, or blockquotes, etc. I didn't include that in the image, or css, above, as that wasn't the point of the thread.... but you can do something like this:

 hr.ChDiv + p {text-indent: 0}

And now back to the intent of this thread " ‘Punctuation rules of thumb'”...Sorry for the thread drift

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by DNSB

None. Even for your quotation marks fetish, take a look at the Wikipedia Quotation marks entry for the sheer variety used in different countries.

That table was pretty interesting!

Other than some positioning variations (first quote on the bottom, last on the top) it appears that the trend for primary quotes is a double mark (“…”, «…»,《…》) and alternate quotes is a singular of the same mark (‘…’, ‹…›,〈…〉) with the exception of a couple languages that use brackets, in either horizontal or vertical script (「…」, ﹁ ⋮ ﹂,『…』,﹃⋮﹄).

The only languages in that table that reverse that trend are English(UK), Scottish, and Welsh.... so, once again, the Britons got it backward!!

Seriously though, if we had some alien invasion that took control of the entire planet and forced us to have a single quotation system, it doesn't appear that it would be too difficult to decide on one.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

OBTW - just to point out - you are arguing to use padding-top instead of margin-top, but then your example <hr> uses margin....

There is a difference. Using margin-top when you want blank space for a section break does not work when that space is at the bottom of the screen. But padding-top does even if it has to add the space to the top of the next screen.

With the hr you don't need padding-top because even if you lose the space, you do see the line at the bottom of the screen. It's the same with your examples of section breaks. As long as you can see the line or whatever is used at the bottom of the screen, then you know that's where the section breaks and the next paragraph starts the next section.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Then there are the books that don't indent the paragraph after some offset text. Again that just looks wrong because this is not a new scene.

Are you talking after a blockquote?

Because there's a very valid difference between:

• blockquote + noindent next paragraph
• blockquote + indented next paragraph

The 1st is a continuation of the previous pre-blockquote paragraph. (Think very long quotation stuck in the middle of 1 large paragraph.)

The 2nd is telling you you're starting a new paragraph.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Personally I think a space at opening dash and after closing dash would work like (brackets), but I've never seen it and so it looks odd. Usually em with no spaces or en with a space on both sides.

The Quotation Dash?

It's used in various languages, like Spanish. It was discussed in detail in this topic:

2019: "No break space and alignment"

The actual Unicode character for that type should be:

― HORIZONTAL BAR (U+2015)

but its support in fonts/devices in ebooks is... dubious. So most people use the EM DASH instead. (Both look exactly the same, just may have extremely minor spacing/line-breaking differences.)

Originally Posted by Quoth

There is no good reason for the rest of the world to adopt Webster's spellings and one particular set of USA punctuation rules.

Sure there is. America best! All other 7.5+ billion people are wrong!!!

You don't like my Style Guide? (With all my unique little niggles and tweaks to it?) Get out of here and go back to where you came from!

Originally Posted by AlanHK

I see incorrect dash/hyphens all the time in professionally published books now.

And almost every ebook.

The hot lead typesetters are turning in their graves....

One relatively common one I run across is the:

"Three Em Dash"

It's typically used in a Bibliography when you have two+ citations in a row with the exact same author:

• Fitzhugh, George. Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters. Richmond, VA: A. Morris Publisher, 1857.
• ———. Sociology for the South, Or the Failure of Free Society. Richmond, VA: A. Morris Publisher, 1854.

In many cases, the person accidentally only used 1 or 2 dashes (or heaven help you, a bunch of hyphens in a row).

(I just brought this up tangentially in a history book I worked on a few years ago. Discussing superscripts + footnotes + citations. See Post #27: "superscript code".)

Side Note: In actuality, there are these two Unicode characters:

• U+2E3A ⸺ TWO-EM DASH
• U+2E3B ⸻ THREE-EM DASH

but support for these is pretty horrible. So easier to just use the correct number of normal EM DASH.

Note: The "Two Em Dash" would be used when text is redacted/missing:

• As Mrs. S—— told me in the police report: [...]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

It is up to the author/publisher to determine which css they wish to use... that thread goes into greater detail about the pros/cons of margin vs. padding vs. asterisms for section breaks.

That's the ultimate thread on scenebreaks.

I highly recommend everyone just go back and reread that topic from the beginning.

No need to rehash all the same arguments a year later in a completely unrelated thread.

(Although as was discussed in that topic, I do agree with JSWolf with padding... IF you're only relying on spacing and nothing else for your scenebreaks [which is a very poor idea].)

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

As Mrs. S—— told me in the police report

So popular in the 18th & 19th C.
Often used with years and places too.