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Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

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Re: Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

#11

Post by tgb »

furyg3 wrote: post #10

Amazon is probably trying to correct publishers who copy+paste their hardcopy texts (from InDesign or wherever) into eBook format, taking with them artifacts from the print designer, like forced hyphenation. These artifacts from the print world are not useful in eBooks, since the reader is automatically breaking up lines based on the screen size, font, etc. http://indesignsecrets.com/field-guide-to-indesign-hyphens.p…

Thanks for making that point, this makes a lot more sense now. I really hope this is the case. (Though the author does state in a comment that they don't have any of those errors in their text.)

Re: Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

#13

Post by mattmanser »

chrisseaton wrote: post #9
mperham wrote: post #6

Amazon wants to auto-hyphenate based on the current screen / font. Hardcoding hyphens in an ebook will look terrible in most cases. I don't see a problem with Amazon's stance.

I don't think that's what the author is talking about. They mean hyphenated words such as 'wind-up'. The current screen or font doesn't make a difference for whether or not that's hyphenated. You're thinking of hyphenation for splitting a word over a line.

The whole thing's clearly a confusion, with the author being a nonce as he doesn't realize it's to do with line break hyphenates and Amazon customer service being nonces because they don't realize those hyphens aren't line break artefacts and they're just cut/pasting a standard response.

Re: Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

#14

Post by bleuarff »

mperham wrote: post #6

Amazon wants to auto-hyphenate based on the current screen / font. Hardcoding hyphens in an ebook will look terrible in most cases. I don't see a problem with Amazon's stance.

I think you're confusing hyphenation as word-break, which should be automated based on font, screen size, etc. But hyphenation also applies to 2 words that have a different meaning when not hyphenated. And this brings meaning, which Amazon should not interfere with.

Re: Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

#15

Post by userbinator »

We have suppressed the book because of the combined impact to customers

Reading this line, you would think the book is of a sufficiently extreme nature to trigger censoring, but seeing it applied to something as trivial as hyphenation (would that be hyphen-hate-tion...?) is the most shocking part.

Re: Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

#17

Post by DanBC »

When you have "grammar matters" in big fucking letters at the top of a blog you really need to proof read.

> So, chuckling to myself, I sent back a response pointing out that the use of a hyphen to join two words together was perfectly valid in the English language and included a handy link to the Oxford English Dictionaries definition page which described it’s usage.

POSSESSIVE ITS HAS NO APOSTROPHE.

Normally I really don't care -- apostrophe use is confusing; my grammar is lousy; I tend to be descriptivist not prescriptivist, etc.

The writer doesn't mention if these hyphens are all joining two words, or of some of them are used to split a single word across a linebreak. The arguments are different for each. For the former you point to the satisfied reviews and a bunch of style guides about use of hyphens. For the latter you mention the piss-poor typography on Kindle, and the lack of any control for authors or readers. (The setting to left-justify with ragged right margin is a hidden setting that requires a tweak to access).

Re: Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

#18

Post by joesmo »

furyg3 wrote: post #10

Amazon is probably trying to correct publishers who copy+paste their hardcopy texts (from InDesign or wherever) into eBook format, taking with them artifacts from the print designer, like forced hyphenation. These artifacts from the print world are not useful in eBooks, since the reader is automatically breaking up lines based on the screen size, font, etc. http://indesignsecrets.com/field-guide-to-indesign-hyphens.p…

This would be easily rectified if they looked up the words on each side of the hyphen. If they are actual words, then that hyphen should not count. If they are just partial words, then they should. But removing a book from circulation based on an obviously shoddy algorithm should never happen. As a Kindle author myself, I'm having second thoughts about the platform. Censorship by robots isn't exactly an attractive feature.

Re: Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

#19

Post by Luc »

moomin wrote: post #8
_delirium wrote: post #3

My guess is that the majority of complaints Amazon gets about hyphenation in ebooks are due to poorly converted ebooks, where line-breaking hyphens from a print-formatted source file have accidentally made their way into the ebook. Amazon support is generally not set up spend more than 5 seconds looking at your email, so I surmise that they've filed it into the "yeah fix your ebook hyphens" category and are not readi…

Yet somehow they didn't pull A Dance With Dragons, which had appalling hyphenation in the original release.

You're blaming them for giving different treatment to an author who's at least a million times more important to their business?

Re: Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

#20

Post by jeremyswank »

mattmanser wrote: post #13
chrisseaton wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's what the author is talking about. They mean hyphenated words such as 'wind-up'. The current screen or font doesn't make a difference for whether or not that's hyphenated. You're thinking of hyphenation for splitting a word over a line.

The whole thing's clearly a confusion, with the author being a nonce as he doesn't realize it's to do with line break hyphenates and Amazon customer service being nonces because they don't realize those hyphens aren't line break artefacts and they're just cut/pasting a standard response.

i didn't think a human being could be a 'nonce', or is this some new usage i don't know about?
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