axing chapter numbers

[lumpynose]

I'd forgotten about this post, and Turtle91's post is what I should or could have used:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...2&postcount=26

The full thread is here; see the original post for what's wanted:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=319041

What I did was simply delete the "Chapter 1", "Chapter 2" lines since the chapters have a real title. Part of me felt like I was overstepping the bounds of proper and reasonable editing but my stronger feeling is that those numbered chapter headings are unnecessary and irrelevant when the chapter has a real title.

Does anyone else do this?

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by lumpynose

What I did was simply delete the "Chapter 1", "Chapter 2" lines since the chapters have a real title. Part of me felt like I was overstepping the bounds of proper and reasonable editing but my stronger feeling is that those numbered chapter headings are unnecessary and irrelevant when the chapter has a real title.

So when you read Non-Fiction works, you would delete the chapter number as well?

Example:

Chapter 2: The Human Mind
2. The Human Mind

lumpy's method:

The Human Mind

[GrannyGrump]

Working with vintage fiction books -- I do often delete the word "chapter", but always do keep the numerals.

The one exception where I deleted the numerals also, was when it was actually a collection of short stories, not a novel.

For that very reason, in your example, the numerals will keep confusion to a minimum --- without those, the reader *might* surmise that it is a short story collection, and read the contents randomly.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by lumpynose

Does anyone else do this?

No, I may shorten the title to a number and the chapter title but I keep the numbers. I've seen too many book where the chapter titles repeated. As an example, the chapter title was the point of view character for that chapter so the chapter titles are repeats of the POV characters' names.

I.e.

Chapter 1: Simon
Chapter 2: Aaron
Chapter 3: Simon
Chapter 4: Aaron
Chapter 5: Simon
...
Epilogue: Aaron

Not to mention that remembering chapter 17 is a heck of a lot easier than remembering "When the old man came back to the mountain" (real world example). That book I have unfond memories of since the original chapter titles were a graphic with the chapter number centered above the chapter title and the graphic filename being IMGxxxxxx.png. This left the author with manually entering the chapter number/title in the various TOCs and redoing them anytime a change was made. My contribution to that work in progress was adding title="text string" to every header with a graphic so most of the work was done by the computer as is only right and proper. Well, that and convincing the author there was nothing wrong with making her life easier.

[lumpynose]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

So when you read Non-Fiction works, you would delete the chapter number as well?

Example:

Chapter 2: The Human Mind
2. The Human Mind

lumpy's method:

The Human Mind

I'm only doing fiction. But for non-fiction it would never work because you have subsections and subsubsections with numbers. For fiction I just feel like it doesn't add anything when there's a real title and I'm wondering if people are doing it out of habit/convention.

[lumpynose]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

Working with vintage fiction books -- I do often delete the word "chapter", but always do keep the numerals.

The one exception where I deleted the numerals also, was when it was actually a collection of short stories, not a novel.

For that very reason, in your example, the numerals will keep confusion to a minimum --- without those, the reader *might* surmise that it is a short story collection.

The way I've been formatting the short story collections is each one has a separate title page in a separate file so there's a page break before and after it.

Some of the short stories or novelettes have chapters with these numbers in addition to regular titles. Likewise I've also combined a series of novels into a big book and each book has its own separate title page.

[lumpynose]

Originally Posted by DNSB

No, I may shorten the title to a number and the chapter title but I keep the numbers. I've seen too many book where the chapter titles repeated. As an example, the chapter title was the point of view character for that chapter so the chapter titles are repeats of the POV characters' names.

I.e.

Chapter 1: Simon
Chapter 2: Aaron
Chapter 3: Simon
Chapter 4: Aaron
Chapter 5: Simon
...
Epilogue: Aaron

Not to mention that remembering chapter 17 is a heck of a lot easier than remembering "When the old man came back to the mountain" (real world example). That book I have unfond memories of since the original chapter titles were a graphic with the chapter number centered above the chapter title and the graphic filename being IMGxxxxxx.png. This left the author with manually entering the chapter number/title in the various TOCs and redoing them anytime a change was made. My contribution to that work in progress was adding title="text string" to every header with a graphic so most of the work was done by the computer as is only right and proper. Well, that and convincing the author there was nothing wrong with making her life easier.

Yeah, your Simon and Aaron example and the chapter 17 are good reasons to keep them.