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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

#111

Post by [deleted] »

temuze wrote: post #78
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…

Here's the thing though - the writer should have the artistic liberty to use the punctuation they desire.

[deleted]

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

#112

Post by spdustin »

ijk wrote: post #103
spdustin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm still not sure the bookstore is the best place to go for grammar enforcement, rather than suggesting he hire an editor. But Amazon's foray into supporting hands-off self-publishing is at war with their need to have a minimum quality level to avoid scaring off customers. An actual working rating system would help, if anyone had managed to invent such a thing. I'm also of the opinion that if I'm reading a book with…

I'm in a quandary: doesn't the bookstore have a right to set a quality standard (not a poetic one), and a right to protect itself from chargebacks from unhappy customers?

Is the phrase "self published" really correct for Amazon and others to use? It could be argued that Amazon is the one publishing it, and they're really letting you bypass the editors and sales reps from a print-based publishing house to get your works onto Kindles.

I really don't know. The situation makes me uncomfortable as a creator of content, certainly, but the author's railing against the company for protecting its customers and defending against liability from credit card issuers ... That just feels like someone bitching out of a sense of entitlement, and history shows (all over the world) that people who thoughtlessly feel entitled are rarely able to be convinced that they, in fact, are the ones that need to change.

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

#113

Post by tim333 »

temuze wrote: post #78
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…

Here's the thing though - the writer should have the artistic liberty to use the punctuation they desire.

re: "red-head scarf", I'm skeptical that the artistic intention was that it was a scarf for redheads being repurposed for white hair. Though I have not read the story so that might be part of the plot for all I know.

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

#114

Post by spdustin »

mst wrote: post #105
spdustin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have edited my comment to make it clearer that you weren't replying to anything I actually said. Hope that helps.

I was replying to what you said. His hyperbole regarding unintelligent customers was the behavior that was called out as not nice, professional or intelligent.

His piss-poor use of hyphens (see what I did there?), however, isn't hyperbole. Hyperbole is a rhetorical device (and the greatest thing ever!), and unless he intended to evoke an emotional response in his readers by their incorrect and non-poetic application, it's just bad form; Being from the UK has bugger all to do with it.

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

#115

Post by jackmoore »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #109
moron4hire wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but there is a difference between intentionally using bad grammar to invoke ambiguity, and unintentionally getting in the way of a story because the writer doesn't know better.

Sad that he blew £1000 on an "editor" incapable of tidying up the hyphenation mess.

To be fair, we don't know how much worse the text was prior to bringing an editor on.

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

#116

Post by bobwise »

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 explains the strangely-located hyphens I've been seeing in a book I'm reading currently. This must be exactly how the book was submitted.

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

#117

Post by mhandley »

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…

The preview of Moonstruck (the book in question) is also available through Amazon. Here are the first few hypens I can see:

"There could be no-one there, ..."

"...into a razor-filled muzzle ..."

"... sleep, muscular, brown-furred monster."

"... through her blood-soaked fur."

"... propelled backwards in mid-leap, ..."

"... the red-haired woman ..."

"... a tall, grey-haired man ..."

"mid-thirties"

"mother-in-law"

Not my style of fiction, but most of these don't offend my sense of grammar either. I think "mid-leap" is the only one that slightly jars.

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

#118

Post by spdustin »

MBCook wrote: post #26
michaelt wrote: post #4

When there are discussions about Hachette, one often sees writers saying "Amazon gives me more of the cover price, and gets my book into people's hands faster, what's the downside?" I guess this is the downside.

As someone who has been using a Kindle for almost all my book reading in the last few years, the major publishers don't care. Doesn't matter what I read it tends to have quite a few OCR errors and other mistakes that clearly exist for the print edition (extra hyphens) or 'correcting' things that used to be hyphenated (by removing the hyphen that needs to be there). My new Kindle has the ability to let me report typos…

Legitimate query: anyone know if the author receives those reader-reported issues directly?

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

#119

Post by Turing_Machine »

michaelt wrote: post #4

When there are discussions about Hachette, one often sees writers saying "Amazon gives me more of the cover price, and gets my book into people's hands faster, what's the downside?" I guess this is the downside.

Are you suggesting that Hachette has no standards and/or formatting rules for the books they publish?

Surely not.

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

#120

Post by Turing_Machine »

herge wrote: post #7
kefka wrote: post #2

And this is why we used to deal with monopolies so harshly. Alas. I wonder when our country will start working in the citizens' favour?

When they force authors to publish in non-DRM encumbered formats that all readers can read like ePub or Mobipocket?

Amazon doesn't "force" DRM on anybody. It's a checkbox in the publishing portal.
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