ebook.com preview is mangled.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And I will take an eBook with UK style en dashes and fix it to US style em dashes. It reads so much better. en dashes look like a mistake.

Jon, perhaps to you, it reads so much better. Others may will disagree. What I want is to have consistency. Reading with an en dash and spaces or an em dash and no spaces is fine. Having them mixed in the same book for the same purposes? That is downright annoying.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

But that is purely your own preference and opinion. If you were formatting ebooks in a publishing business you'd have to apply the house rules.

If I was doing that, I'd try to get them to see how much better the eBooks are properly formatted. I know it may be my preferences, but I do think that more people would like my preferences then not.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Jon, perhaps to you, it reads so much better. Others may will disagree. What I want is to have consistency. Reading with an en dash and spaces or an em dash and no spaces is fine. Having them mixed in the same book for the same purposes? That is downright annoying.

But it is wrong to have spaces around an em dash. And yes, it's also wrong to mix en and em dashes.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Quoth

At least you can probably fix it unless it's on paper? Most people are stuck with what they get.

Yes, of course, I *can.* But why should I have to? It's not even Indy pubbed, for crying out loud!

Hitch

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yes, of course, I *can.* But why should I have to? It's not even Indy pubbed, for crying out loud!

Hitch

It's very annoying. Took me an entire day to fix a book, over 200 errors apparently due to not checking an OCR, or very inept checking. But the content was good (A Manning Coles story) and the Lady here will now not be troubled when she reads it. I annotated as I read, then exported it as a docx. I reported it to Amazon and gave a suitable negative review of the proof-reading too (which they accepted).

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Jon, perhaps to you, it reads so much better. Others may will disagree. What I want is to have consistency. Reading with an en dash and spaces or an em dash and no spaces is fine. Having them mixed in the same book for the same purposes? That is downright annoying.

Yes, I don't bother changing USA texts with properly done em dashes. But if I'm fixing a British/Irish book I will do proper spaced en dashes.
A dolly mixture of styles of paragraphing, em vs en with spaces and inconsistent dialogue outer and inner quotes is terrible. Or even on one sentence, ‘Are we going now?”
UK isn't always ‘outer single quotes’, some UK publishers & eras do use “and” and Irish publishers often do. Totally crazy when there is a nested quote and the quote style isn't swapped, that's almost junior school English.

Especially with older books I don't mind British or American styles, spelling and grammar as long as it is a British/Irish book or an American one.

Reading a book at the moment that's mostly UK style and possibly UK author & publisher, but she has watched too much USA TV. It's like an American book translated to British!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Yes, I don't bother changing USA texts with properly done em dashes. But if I'm fixing a British/Irish book I will do proper spaced en dashes.
A dolly mixture of styles of paragraphing, em vs en with spaces and inconsistent dialogue outer and inner quotes is terrible. Or even on one sentence, ‘Are we going now?”
UK isn't always ‘outer single quotes’, some UK publishers & eras do use “and” and Irish publishers often do. Totally crazy when there is a nested quote and the quote style isn't swapped, that's almost junior school English.

Especially with older books I don't mind British or American styles, spelling and grammar as long as it is a British/Irish book or an American one.

Reading a book at the moment that's mostly UK style and possibly UK author & publisher, but she has watched too much USA TV. It's like an American book translated to British!

I don't mind UK words and phrases. But I do prefer US styling with double quotes for speech, en dashes with no space, and ellipses with no space.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But it is wrong to have spaces around an em dash. And yes, it's also wrong to mix en and em dashes.

And yet, the AP style guide states that a space on each side of the em dash is required.

Jon, at some point in time, you will need to realize that just because it's not being done the way you would prefer, that it is not wrong. Unless you can provide images of the stone tablets you brought down from the mountain with those rules on them, please stop trying to make your opinions sound like authoritative facts.

I was at the Tsawwassen ferry terminal for a Vancouver–Victoria sailing on Friday when the couple in the car ahead of mine—a couple of real twits—almost missed the sailing when they wandered off to walk their dog.

Note the en dash between Vancouver/Victoria is used in the sense 'to' much as in Monday–Friday. So it can be correct to mix en and em dashes in the same sentence, even an en dash with no spaces.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by DNSB

And yet, the AP style guide states that a space on each side of the em dash is required.

Jon, at some point in time, you will need to realize that just because it's not being done the way you would prefer, that it is not wrong. Unless you can provide images of the stone tablets you brought down from the mountain with those rules on them, please stop trying to make your opinions sound like authoritative facts.



Note the en dash between Vancouver/Victoria is used in the sense 'to' much as in Monday–Friday. So it can be correct to mix en and em dashes in the same sentence, even an en dash with no spaces.

I totally agree, but I would also point out that AP is a written (paper) standard… unless it’s changed in the last X-moons since I read it, I don’t think it has an electronic publication section???

The technique of having a non-breaking space before the en dash, and a regular space after, would at least anchor the dash to the previous word… it’d look awfully funny if the dash were at the beginning of a line with the last part of the word.

[roland1]

I can go one better than the em dash by confessing here that I use BOTH US AND UK SPELLING SIMULTANEOUSLY! [gasp.]

I find that certain words, like color, are WAY more economical on the eyes than all that leftover latin/french "u" stuff that we Canadians still have to slog around.

At other times, there are US spellings like "traveler" which look like a spelling error to me until I add the extra "L". And why is it not "speling" in US if it can be "traveler"?

Insanity. I am drawing a line in the digital sand. From here on in, I'm spelling my way.

I just published the kindle and regular epub versions of my new book today using the more modest css styling set as suggested by you folks.

Thanks again for that. (AND Hitch for suggesting the .2em padding on the paragraphs which I think gives it some of the lost finesse of books that are trying to save paper by cramming too much stuff together. [cough cough, em dash, cough cough.]

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by roland1

I can go one better than the em dash by confessing here that I use BOTH US AND UK SPELLING SIMULTANEOUSLY! [gasp.]

I find that certain words, like color, are WAY more economical on the eyes than all that leftover latin/french "u" stuff that we Canadians still have to slog around.

I know Canada has USA cultural imports, but really you'll annoy the vast majority of readers doing your own hybrid of USA and British spelling. Also how can you reliably spellcheck it without your own custom dictionary.

It will just seem badly proofed. Use USA or not, not two schemes.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I don't mind UK words and phrases. But I do prefer US styling with double quotes for speech …

USA only uses outer double quotes. Single or double is a House style decision in the UK and often double in other countries using British English.

You can have your own style rules on your own publishing.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

I totally agree, but I would also point out that AP is a written (paper) standard… unless it’s changed in the last X-moons since I read it, I don’t think it has an electronic publication section???

The technique of having a non-breaking space before the en dash, and a regular space after, would at least anchor the dash to the previous word… it’d look awfully funny if the dash were at the beginning of a line with the last part of the word.

Yes, all true.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by roland1

I can go one better than the em dash by confessing here that I use BOTH US AND UK SPELLING SIMULTANEOUSLY! [gasp.]

I find that certain words, like color, are WAY more economical on the eyes than all that leftover latin/french "u" stuff that we Canadians still have to slog around.

At other times, there are US spellings like "traveler" which look like a spelling error to me until I add the extra "L". And why is it not "speling" in US if it can be "traveler"?

Insanity. I am drawing a line in the digital sand. From here on in, I'm spelling my way.

I just published the kindle and regular epub versions of my new book today using the more modest css styling set as suggested by you folks.

Thanks again for that. (AND Hitch for suggesting the .2em padding on the paragraphs which I think gives it some of the lost finesse of books that are trying to save paper by cramming too much stuff together. [cough cough, em dash, cough cough.]

It's not about saving space. It's about how it looks and the .2em space does not look good.

I also agree that you should not mix different regions spellings. Go for the one where you think your book will sell best.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's not about saving space. It's about how it looks and the .2em space does not look good.

I also agree that you should not mix different regions spellings. Go for the one where you think your book will sell best.

Yes, or what people will expect. The "Celtic Otherworld" series sells best in USA, but British English makes more sense. Though in a later book when a team is in the USA some USA terms are used, but still British spelling.

Vocabulary is different for USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa and to some extent between Ireland and Great Britain (there are regional versions in GB too) even when words have the same spelling so books are best using your native vocabulary unless it's completely set elsewhere with the local characters and that is actually hard to do. Words might have same spelling but unrelated meanings or normal usage.