hyphen + trailing space in retail mobi text

cybmole · 02-02-2012, 07:23 AM

i am currently reading a retail mobi ( Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked) which contains a strange mixture of styles

IT has the usual syllable-rest of word construction for hyphenated words,e.g. "half-lit"
but also has many instances of syllable -Hyphen-space-rest of word constructs like "half- lit".

I can't decide if this is due to sloppy formatting or if it is done deliberately to improve e-reader justification ( as Kindle will not break lines just for a simple hyphen ).

the book also has (correct) usage of clause - clause constructs wih spaces both sides of the hyphen.

I canoot find any style guides which would explain / justify use of a hyphen+trailing space construct for a simple hyphenated word?

DanBenton · 02-02-2012, 07:43 AM

Hi

Most likely this has come from the conversion process - I'd guess that half-lit breaks at the end of a line in the print version, and soft hyphens cause problems that are hard to pick up with automatic checks.

cybmole · 02-02-2012, 08:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DanBenton

Hi

Most likely this has come from the conversion process - I'd guess that half-lit breaks at the end of a line in the print version, and soft hyphens cause problems that are hard to pick up with automatic checks.

plausible - what source format would a publisher be starting from, when the book has been around for 10+ years as hardback/paperback before making it onto Kindle; do publishers have digital sources left over from the typesetting process or do they have to rescan & OCR their own books ?

DanBenton · 02-02-2012, 11:21 AM

If it's 10-15 years I'd say Quark files and PDFs; older than that they might need to get it scanned. A lot of the first wave of Kindle books were scanned by Amazon, y'know.

cybmole · 02-02-2012, 11:28 AM

interesting - the Phil Rickman - Merrily Watkins series is set in 1990s & was probably published back then in paper form
amazon are now drip feeding the kindle versions into the market, one at a time. they have released 6 to date , starting in 2010, & volumes 1 - 4 were quite well formatted; but this volume 5 is a real mess. indents are all over the place , in addition to the hyphenation issues

AThirstyMind · 02-03-2012, 09:20 AM

The trailing space could be a scanning error that just wasn't caught during formatting. I've found that lots of books are just scanned, minimally proofed, then converted...drives me nuts as a formatter. But also we're dealing with that Kindle justification problem. It also shows up with ellipsis...a trailing space so that the word, ellipsis, word doesn't get clumped together leaving just one word on the line above, weird looking. I don't use ellipsis anymore, just either space, 3 periods, space or 3 periods with space in between ( . . . ). It's an on-going battle trying to fit you text into Kindle's idea of justification! And there are so many eReader screen sizes...it keeps me up at night!

02-02-2012, 07:23 AM	#1
cybmole Wizard Posts: 3,720 Karma: 1759970 Join Date: Sep 2010 Device: none	hyphen + trailing space in retail mobi text i am currently reading a retail mobi ( Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked) which contains a strange mixture of styles IT has the usual syllable-rest of word construction for hyphenated words,e.g. "half-lit" but also has many instances of syllable -Hyphen-space-rest of word constructs like "half- lit". I can't decide if this is due to sloppy formatting or if it is done deliberately to improve e-reader justification ( as Kindle will not break lines just for a simple hyphen ). the book also has (correct) usage of clause - clause constructs wih spaces both sides of the hyphen. I canoot find any style guides which would explain / justify use of a hyphen+trailing space construct for a simple hyphenated word?

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02-02-2012, 07:43 AM	#2
DanBenton Member Posts: 17 Karma: 20 Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: London Device: Kindle	Hi Most likely this has come from the conversion process - I'd guess that half-lit breaks at the end of a line in the print version, and soft hyphens cause problems that are hard to pick up with automatic checks.

02-02-2012, 11:21 AM	#4
DanBenton Member Posts: 17 Karma: 20 Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: London Device: Kindle	If it's 10-15 years I'd say Quark files and PDFs; older than that they might need to get it scanned. A lot of the first wave of Kindle books were scanned by Amazon, y'know.

02-02-2012, 11:28 AM	#5
cybmole Wizard Posts: 3,720 Karma: 1759970 Join Date: Sep 2010 Device: none	interesting - the Phil Rickman - Merrily Watkins series is set in 1990s & was probably published back then in paper form amazon are now drip feeding the kindle versions into the market, one at a time. they have released 6 to date , starting in 2010, & volumes 1 - 4 were quite well formatted; but this volume 5 is a real mess. indents are all over the place , in addition to the hyphenation issues

02-03-2012, 09:20 AM	#6
AThirstyMind A Thirsty Mind Posts: 92 Karma: 2546 Join Date: May 2011 Location: Lubec, Maine Device: Kindle Fire, iPad, iPhone	The trailing space could be a scanning error that just wasn't caught during formatting. I've found that lots of books are just scanned, minimally proofed, then converted...drives me nuts as a formatter. But also we're dealing with that Kindle justification problem. It also shows up with ellipsis...a trailing space so that the word, ellipsis, word doesn't get clumped together leaving just one word on the line above, weird looking. I don't use ellipsis anymore, just either space, 3 periods, space or 3 periods with space in between ( . . . ). It's an on-going battle trying to fit you text into Kindle's idea of justification! And there are so many eReader screen sizes...it keeps me up at night!

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