Best practices for line height in 2022?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by BKh

I found this 10 year old post but not much else giving opinions on setting line height in epubs.

I am mainly a Kindle user and that has allowed the user to set line height for a long time. However I see that in Calibre and ADE, this is not an option.

What is currently considered best practice for setting line height?

Actually, KDP will override any body-font line-height setting and change it back to 1.2ems. You can change the line-height, individually, of a paragraph here or there, or a div, containing some text, but if you try to put that on the main p setting or the body tag, it seems to fail (be overridden) pretty consistently.

It will APPEAR to work, when the book is initially created and previewed, but once it goes through the PW (Publishing Workflow, which is what happens when you push "publish" at KDP), the line-height will be brought back into KDP compliance with their Publishing Guidelines.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

The thing is, if you do put in line-height you can end up taking away the ability for some to adjust the line-height to what they want. You really don't want to do that.

[JJ Johnson]

Related(?)

What would be the CSS to get exactly one line height's worth of paragraph spacing?

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by JJ Johnson

Related(?)

What would be the CSS to get exactly one line height's worth of paragraph spacing?

Add the space to the top of the paragraph with css on the p tag:

p {
    margin-top: 1em;
}

An em is the height of a character (in that paragraph's font). You can tweak it and use something like 0.5em or 1.5em. As I remember 1em is too much so 0.5em or 0.65em or something looks better. Some people make it so it's just perceptible; subtle but effective. Purists tend to be scandalized if you use both paragraph indentation and space between paragraphs.

[JJ Johnson]

Originally Posted by hobnail

p {
    margin-top: 1em;
}

That was my first thought, but will it maintain one line of spacing no matter how the line-spacing is adjusted by the user on the reader?

This would be for books where I have no paragraph indentation, so one full line of spacing doesn't seem too much at all. I prefer this layout where there's a lot of dialog, rather than having a lot of one-line paragraphs that are indented.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by JJ Johnson

That was my first thought, but will it maintain one line of spacing no matter how the line-spacing is adjusted by the user on the reader?

Sorry, I don't know. Is there some reason you can't experiment and try it? As far as I know margin-top is the standard way of adding space between paragraphs. You could add it to the bottom but my vague memory is that things work better when it's added at the top.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JJ Johnson

That was my first thought, but will it maintain one line of spacing no matter how the line-spacing is adjusted by the user on the reader?

This would be for books where I have no paragraph indentation, so one full line of spacing doesn't seem too much at all. I prefer this layout where there's a lot of dialog, rather than having a lot of one-line paragraphs that are indented.

Well, this is a discussion about CSS and HTML, not book layout--but for what it's worth, the industry standard is first-line indent, no space between, no matter how much dialogue there is.

I can tell you--and I know I'm far from the only one--that when, on KU, (or KS) I come across a block-style novel, I'll report the formatting to KDP immediately, so that they'll issue a KQN (Kindle Quality Notice) to the publisher, to have it fixed. And I'll return it--come back to it when it's correctly formatted. I'm trying to read a book--an eBook--where space matters. I don't care to have my precious screen-space wasted with empty blank lines.

I know this sounds harsh and I don't really mean for it to--but using block-style paragraph formatting in novels is not a professional, commercial look. Take a look at all the novels you see from Random House, Scribner, etc. on Amazon, B&N, wherever you buy them. See others with block style? No, you won't.

You can use top-margin for your line of space. Works fine.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Well, this is a discussion about CSS and HTML, not book layout--but for what it's worth, the industry standard is first-line indent, no space between, no matter how much dialogue there is.

I can tell you--and I know I'm far from the only one--that when, on KU, (or KS) I come across a block-style novel, I'll report the formatting to KDP immediately, so that they'll issue a KQN (Kindle Quality Notice) to the publisher, to have it fixed. And I'll return it--come back to it when it's correctly formatted. I'm trying to read a book--an eBook--where space matters. I don't care to have my precious screen-space wasted with empty blank lines.

I know this sounds harsh and I don't really mean for it to--but using block-style paragraph formatting in novels is not a professional, commercial look. Take a look at all the novels you see from Random House, Scribner, etc. on Amazon, B&N, wherever you buy them. See others with block style? No, you won't.

You can use top-margin for your line of space. Works fine.

Hitch

I agree with this. Besides being unprofessional, it makes for a terrible reading experience.