Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

If I can get this to display without the forum eating it...

­ is a "soft hyphen", which is invisible normally, but allows the word to break and inserts a hyphen when necessary.

Adding "hyphens: auto;" to the CSS may get it to break words automatically, but I've had mixed results with browser support for the hyphenation settings, and hyphenation heuristics are browser-dependent and generally not very good, so I usually leave it off and put in soft hyphens by hand where I think they might be necessary.

How could traditional publishing be so wrong?

Group think. Once you devolve into group think you almost never get correct decisions.

Actually, I think it's a carryover from print books.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? We were talking about where dead tree publishing (print books) conventions come from.

I consider dead-tree publishing and traditional publishing the same thing and now they publish ebooks.

Right.

You made a comment about how could dead tree publishing be so wrong (because most every one here doesn't like full justification).

I said it was mostly the result of group think.

To which you said no, it's a carry over from print books.

What the fuck dude, I was referring to how the print industry got that convention in the first place.

Indentation exists because it was cheaper for early printers

This thing between the two of us on this topic starting with my group think comment is about full justification not indentation and/or line spacing.

And the "this is how it should be done because this is how it's always been done, never mind the reasons it was done in the first place no longer apply" is an aspect of group think.

We were talking about where dead tree publishing (print books) conventions come from.

If you wish to be rude & crude, we can do that. But, print book conventions were established over many decades where the Linotype typesetting machine ruled the industry, along with letter-press printing with type locked into steel frames. Later advances did little to change the already established formatting standards.

It took appreciable extra hand labor to insert leading (space) between lines with extra 'leads' (thin strips, pronounced 'led' as in 'led by the nose') so it was avoided. Same was true for paragraph spacing, but if the book designer insisted, it was less labor intensive for paragraphs.

So, following Lazeez's excellent point about paper, binding, and the added costs of extra 'signatures' for printing and the increased press time, we have the costs of page composition by printers laboring over the type stones, assembling the page forms in the type chases. Cheap book=dense page of lines as they came from the Linotype, with little hand insertion of extra physical elements (leads, spacers, ornaments, etc.)

Again, having worked in the industry, conventions established over decades were extremely slow to change even after offset printing technology freed us from the rigid demands of lead type. I recall it took quite a few years to get folks to stop inserting TWO spaces between sentences on their early PC keyboards, not realizing they were slavishly following obsolete typewriter conventions. Or using the spacebar for character alignment.

professional typesetters (or whatever the correct term is now)

I think the correct term is now 'dinosaurs' :)

Yet the consensus here is that's hard to read.

For me, it's not that it hard to read in a traditional sense.

I am extremely near sighted. to the point that I can't read a paper book without my glasses unless I hold the book right up to my face.

I've been that way since I was very young. At fifty, my eyes no longer change focus as well. If I shift from looking at something at one distance to another, there is a noticeable delay in my eyes focusing at the new distance.

It wasn't so bad when I was younger, but now, trying to read full justified text, the inconsistent word spacing makes it harder for my eyes to maintain proper focus on the text.

I can read full justified text okay, but enough of it at one time produces actual physical discomfort.

Imagine how large something like Deja Vu Ascendancy if it were to be printed on paper. It would have to be 20 separate books. As an ebook? no problem. So, paragraph spacing is nil to save paper.

Is that 20 books with traditional DTP formatting or 20 with the better white space in e-books?

How many would it be the other way? Assuming same number of pages per book, it wouldn't make a difference of more than 1 either way.

In my opinion, the convention likely has more to do with issues related to hand set type than saving paper.

In my opinion, the convention likely has more to do with issues related to hand set type than saving paper.

Hand-set type stopped having any influence on book publishing standards the moment the Linotype typecasting machine came into use. And a little-noted feature of that machine was auto-justification. Owing to the mechanical needs of the line-caster, it was dead simple that each line was auto-justified full length. Actually, the operator had to take extra steps to left- or right- justify lines. As for indenting, that was a no-brainer. The operator simply hit the 'quad' key to drop a blank, before pressing the next letter key. Also, hyphenation became almost a necessity on short Linotype lines, else the excessive word spacing required extra spacing that the spaceband wedges couldn't provide. It was much easier and faster to drop in a thin hyphen character to fill out as much of the line as possible.

(I owned three Linotype machines and did much of our typesetting. I wonder if Wikipedia has entries for front- and back-squirts. Only a masochistic fool operated a Linotype wearing sandals.)

Lazeez is absolutely right. Trying to carry over dead-tree page conventions to eBooks is absurd, but ossified brains will tolerate no other. They cherish the dead-tree altar of .pdf format.

Hand-set type stopped having any influence on book publishing standards the moment the Linotype typecasting machine came into use.

That doesn't mean that conventions developed for hand-set type just went away.

Ever wonder why the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters are the size that they are?

Because that were delivered by rail and had to pass through a tunnel.

The width of the tunnel was determined by the gauge of the rail line (4' 8.5").

That's kind of an odd measurement, ever wonder where it comes from. It's because that's the gauge used by British rail roads.

Why did they use such an odd number, because the first British rail cars were build by British wagon makers and they used the same jigs.

So why is that the width for British Wagons?

Because they were built to fit the ruts in the roads.

Roads that were built by the Romans and the ruts were initially made by Roman chariots.

Why was a roman chariot that width? To fit a pair of Roman horses.

So part of the specs for the most advanced transportation system ever built were determined by a pair of horses asses 2000 year ago.

And a little-noted feature of that machine was auto-justification. Owing to the mechanical needs of the line-caster, it was dead simple that each line was auto-justified full length. Actually, the operator had to take extra steps to left- or right- justify lines.

Ever stop to think that maybe it was designed that way to match hand-set type conventions?

I work in IT. IT is infested with standards that are obsolete, the systems they were created for no longer exist and the newer systems don't need those standards (and would work better without them), but like zombies, those obsolete standards simply will not die.

Your first example concerning rail gauges, etc. is irrelevant. From the earliest days of print, through the Linotype age, and up until the chaos and mass confusion of the PC era wherein the likes of Microsoft and Apple and standards-ignorant software developers all but destroyed the universal conventions in their products, the units of measure, the conventions of page and book architecture, and the terminology and practices of skilled typesetters and printers were well established and stable.

No, the auto-justified output of the Linotype had nothing to do with emulating hand-set type. It was a direct consequence of the manner in which letter matrices dropped onto the elevator bar between the line-casting jaws, with polished expanding steel spacebands inserted between words. It was a direct consequence of assuring a tight line acting as a dam that would not leak molten lead when rotated and pressed tightly against the casting mouth of the molten lead pot, and hot lead pumped against it under high pressure. Again, full justification of each line was AUTOMATIC; it took extra operator time and tweaking to do otherwise. A later optional feature became available called "auto-quadding" in which right- or left- justification eliminated operator intervention.

I made the transition from Linotype and hot-lead printing, to early-day phototypesetting, and finally to so-called "desktop publishing" using digital tools. It was the arrival of the PC/desktop publishing upheaval that standards were ignored by most major players, and chaos has reigned ever since.

Hence all these dead bytes expended in the cause of endless arguments and dead-fish flinging.

1 and 4a is my preference (just like it is on the forums here), though I agree with the half-line rather than full-line between paragraphs.

Dead tree publishing has to worry about the dead trees they're using.

I was going to point out that whitespace costs in dead-tree, too.

Thanks for that comment. I was talking to my wife about this topic and mentioned the 6pt after a paragraph but didn't really know what that meant. If I understand your comment, for a 12pt font, a 6pt white space is half a character's height.

Don't add an empty line with a different font size. Just set a top or bottom padding of 0.5em on the p element in your css. This also has the advantage that you can easily adjust that value to 0.45em or 0.55em and everywhere the paragraphs will be set.

... though I agree with the half-line rather than full-line between paragraphs.

Me too. It should be easy to set since the "empty line" between paragraphs should not be an empty line but a top or bottom padding on the p element. That can easily be set to, for example, half a line height.

It's because of this 'new paragraph = new speaker rule' I hate authors using the 'dropped quotation rule' in dialogue because dialogue isn't quotation and it only confuses readers as to who is speaking.

This. Lately I notice more an more stories where the closing quote is dropped and a new paragraph starts with an opening quote and that's supposed to mean it's the same speaker. It's not only confusing but it also looks just plain wrong. I really don't care if it's a correct literary rule, how it looks and reads is just wrong. Use the cursed br if you think a new line is needed but don't start a new paragraph for the same speaker like described.

Lately I notice more an more stories where the closing quote is dropped and a new paragraph starts with an opening quote and that's supposed to mean it's the same speaker.

It's technically correct, but I go to some lengths to avoid using it, because it's easy to miss, confuses readers, and when one character goes on and on for paragraphs without narration or other characters speaking to break it up, it's often a symptom of deeper problems in the story.

I wonder if you notice it now because of the discussions about it here and now you're aware of it. It was probably always like that but you just knew who was speaking. Now you see the punctuation.

No, I've noticed it for some months now. At first I thought it were typos until there was a forum post that mentioned it (not this thread, one some time ago). I even corrected some stories by removing the paragraph brake; an advantage I have because I download and convert html, not epubs.

It was probably always like that but you just knew who was speaking.

Or he could tell who was speaking from entirely separate contextual cues and the unnoticed dropped quote had squat to do with it.

However, there are those who disagree with me because the Chicago Manual of Style lists it as valid for a quotation and they think dialogue is a quotation because it's designated by apostrophes the same way a quote is.

That's the problem with Style Manuals, they are too often taken as gospel, even if it's not logical and sometimes even unreadable.