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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

#81

Post by tragic »

Someone1234 wrote: post #74
joesmo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fe…

> If they are actual words, then that hyphen should not count. That would have side-effects e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-barrelled_name

Not to mention fantasy/SF love of invented languages. I'd hate to be HP Lovecraft if this becomes common.

Or have to quote transliterated Arabic, for that matter.

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

#82

Post by maemilius »

Pxtl wrote: post #61
ulisesrmzroche wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motorhome is not hyphenated.

I blame spellcheck. In many cases the most legible solution is a German-style mashingwordstogether, but spellcheck systems highlight those so people hyphenate instead. For example, spellcheck has a curly red underline right now. But would it really look better as spell-check?

I think it would be more grammatically correct to call it "spell-check" or even "spell check" instead of "spellcheck".

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

#83

Post by chavesn »

Someone1234 wrote: post #74
joesmo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fe…

> If they are actual words, then that hyphen should not count. That would have side-effects e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-barrelled_name

Of course there will be exceptions, and it wouldn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be better than counting hyphens alone, which the suggestion above inarguably is.

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

#84

Post by joesmo »

Someone1234 wrote: post #74
joesmo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fe…

> If they are actual words, then that hyphen should not count. That would have side-effects e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-barrelled_name

Well then they shouldn't do it at all or rethink their algorithm altogether.

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

#85

Post by spdustin »

mst wrote: post #76
hartator wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point, I've caught a few other things that grind my gears. "Are there people out there so fucking mind-bogglingly stupid that the inclusion of a – between two words confuses them enough to be torn from the story and ruin the reading experience so much that they felt obliged to write to Amazon and complain?" I think that the author insulting someone who have paid for his book is not something intelligent, nice or…

> I think that the author insulting someone who have paid for his book is not something intelligent, nice or professional. That's fairly straight up UK english hyperbole. Calling the author stupid and unprofessional because you're unfamiliar with the way UK english works is a trifle unfair. Edit: I'm specifically talking about being unfamiliar with that style of hyperbole here. I am not defending the hyphenation. Tha…

He didn't say the author was stupid, nor did he say he was unprofessional. He said the author's behavior wasn't nice. And it isn't. There's no question in any English reader's mind (US or UK) that the author's heavy-handed use of hyphenation is grammatically incorrect. The buyers of the book DID have their intelligence insulted, and on closer examination, it appears that those customers are actually correct.

I see no reason not to insist on some kind of quality here. We're not talking about poetic license or writing to reflect a dialect, we're talking about the author believing hyphens are correct for a given passage. In the vast majority of his usage, his beliefs are incorrect, and his lack of grammatical awareness (enforced by his own post) is making for a bad reading experience.

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

#86

Post by duaneb »

jgrahamc wrote: post #47

So, I looked through the preview of the author's "High Moor" which is available on Amazon.co.uk and I see things like: "One of them picked up what looked like a dog's hind-leg and put it in a white plastic bag." "With the two-week Easter holiday just over a month away, ..." "The woman's white hair was hidden by a red-head scarf, ..." "The door of one of the expensive motor-homes opened ..." Seems to me Amazon may hav…

That's fair, but they hardly hinder readability. I think that's well within artistic license and should hardly be automatically (!?) suppressed from the store.

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

#87

Post by spdustin »

mxfh wrote: post #51

The big issue here are not the hyphens, other than maintaining formatting for different devices the publisher should not mess with the content after an author approved edit. Traditionally there was the copy editing process done by the publisher, but automating this on a the-customer-is-always-right process would probably have left a lot of hard to digest classics no where to be found. And seriously? Running a work of…

All of your examples relate to the knowing use of, let's say, "flavorful" language.

The author's "flavor" appears to be "hyphen-happy" - do you believe his intent was to style his writing that way for dramatic or artistic effect?

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

#89

Post by aoloe »

dghf wrote: post #66
shreve wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. What they were going for was "red head-scarf", but that is also questionable. I've only ever seen "head scarf" unhyphenated.

I can't remember where I came across it (possibly Gowers' Plain Words ), but I like the rule that you should hyphenate to avoid ambiguity but not otherwise. E.g. is "a red head scarf" a red scarf for the head or a scarf for red heads? From context, it should be obvious, but hyphenating "head scarf" would make it explicit. (Of course, you could always avoid the problem entirely by using "headscarf" instead.) There are…

If you need an hyphen to make clear what a "read head scarf" is, shouldn't you rewrite your sentence?

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

#90

Post by Buge »

harshreality wrote: post #80
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…

Check the comments after the post. That's mentioned as a possible reason and the author says that's not the case. Apparently Amazon is complaining about real hyphenated words, not line-break hyphen-ated words. [edit: It appears, though, that the author is stylistically abusing hyphens, so while they may not be wrong, they're grating to most readers. So, should Amazon be in the business of banning books on the grounds…

furyg3 knows that the book only has proper hyphens. Amazon took down the book because they thought it was full of line break hyphens. It wasn't, but that's what Amazon thought because they never actually looked.
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