The Dreaded Em Dash

[AuthorGreg]

Originally Posted by Funslinger

I'm not having a problem with em dashes on my personal ePubs on my Nook Simple Touch.

Okay, but do you read mostly Indie stuff, or Big-Six books?

[Rockbobster]

Originally Posted by AuthorGreg

Have you tried it on a Nook Simple Touch, Rock?

I have no Nook Simple Touch. If someone sent me one I would be delighted to test these things out for them.

[AuthorGreg]

With a membership at Barnes & Noble, they're only 89 bucks. Though I believe they're committed to mediocrity, I made a good-faith investment. I also figure I can write it off....

[Dopedangel]

Can you send me one of the files or a link with I will try it on my nook touch. I have a different readers in my nook touch could also check if the problem is specific to the internal nook touch reader only

[AuthorGreg]

Dopedangel,

I sent you a PM with my email address. I can't post it to the forum. If I did, Amazon would make my book free forever.

Thanks,

Greg

[AuthorGreg]

Well, God help me, but I just refuse to give up on this thing.

I downloaded the "Prince and the Pauper" ePub from this forum, and on the Nook Simple Touch and through the Adobe Digital Editions viewer, the em-dashes display, but they have a space on either side of them. They don't have the "stickiness" they normally do. However, on the Barnes & Noble Nook Desktop previewer, the em-dashes ARE sticky. They display as they should.

I downloaded a sample of 50 Shades of Grey to my Simple Touch. The em-dashes display properly. What does Random House, Inc. know about ePub formatting that the rest of us don't? Why can they have an em-dash display properly but hardly anyone else?

Where can the secret be found?

Thanks,

Greg

[HarryT]

Why don't you look at the source of an ePub that does work correctly, and see what the difference is?

[AuthorGreg]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Why don't you look at the source of an ePub that does work correctly, and see what the difference is?

Well, the problem there is that all of the eBooks I see formatted correctly, all are DRM'ed.

I will keep searching, though...

[PeterT]

@AuthorGreg: You could always google for "Apprentice Alf" and install his little tool package...

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by AuthorGreg

Well, the problem there is that all of the eBooks I see formatted correctly, all are DRM'ed.

I will keep searching, though...

If you can track down a free (or very cheap) example (even if it's DRM'ed) of an ePub where the em-dashes do display properly, I'm sure someone might be willing to "purchase" it and might be able to track down what was going on.

[AuthorGreg]

Well, to update this saga...

I ran my Word manuscript through the good old Meatgrinder of Smashwords.

Guess what?

It produces the absolute PERFECT ePub, at least on my Nook Simple Touch.

Em dashes are fully preserved. Line spacing now works. Lines with italics now don't interfere with line height.

I'm too tired right now, but tomorrow I'm going to explode that ePub and see what Mark Coker knows that not many others do.

I now feel bad about every bad thing I'd previously said about the Meatgrinder.

Greg

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AuthorGreg

Well, to update this saga...

I ran my Word manuscript through the good old Meatgrinder of Smashwords.

Guess what?

It produces the absolute PERFECT ePub, at least on my Nook Simple Touch.

Em dashes are fully preserved. Line spacing now works. Lines with italics now don't interfere with line height.

I'm too tired right now, but tomorrow I'm going to explode that ePub and see what Mark Coker knows that not many others do.

I now feel bad about every bad thing I'd previously said about the Meatgrinder.

Greg

All Mark has done is run the Word file through Calibre to produce absolutely awful code under the hood. The code can actually break things like being able to change fonts and night mode. The reason the code is so bad is not because of Calibre, but because Word puts in too much garbage and garbage in, poor ePub out.

[AuthorGreg]

Well, JS, you're right. It produces unpredictable and inconsistent output. But hell, at least it got some things right I hadn't been able to accomplish with either Calibre or Sigil, including the scalable line spacing and SOME of the em dashes.

That Meatgrinder thing really paints your wagon as far as having no choice but using Microsoft Word. So even if you style everything PERFECTLY in Word, you're still at the mercy of a mysterious process, over which you have NO control.

I'm about to give up on this em dash thing and just go to two hyphens instead. Hopefully the electronic media world will forgive and tolerate my decision.

Thanks,

Greg

p.s. The file displayed PERFECTLY in Adobe Digital Editions, however. I really don't understand this stuff, but I am convinced there's a bug in the reader for the Nook Simple Touch.

[Perkin]

Originally Posted by AuthorGreg

I'm about to give up on this em dash thing and just go to two hyphens instead. Hopefully the electronic media world will forgive and tolerate my decision.

If using the two-dashes, (if you then,) when converting use the 'Smarten punctuation' option in the Look & Feel section of conversion options, that will conert the dashes to proper em-dash entities.

[ldolse]

You've been given a variety of good advice by several senior forum members that you've thus far ignored for all intensive purposes - instead of continually resurrecting the thread with new variants of the same query why don't you actually try to follow someone's advice all the way through?