correct use of …

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

I would find a trailing ellipse on a separate line extremely annoying

I tend to use: last_word&hellip
and forget all those 'conventions' ( I don't sell my work, so there )

I've seen em dashes on a line by themselves plenty of times.

As for ..., I prefer the ellipsis to the three periods and I also prefer no space before and after.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

em dashes should not have a space before or after and you cannot use a dash instead like you did.

in an ebook - I agree - but for lazy typing in a forum the plain dash is on the keyboard and quick to use

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by cybmole

in an ebook - I agree - but for lazy typing in a forum the plain dash is on the keyboard and quick to use

Hold down the alt key and on the keypad type 0151. That will give you an em dash.

[Sabardeyn]

Properly formatted text with an em dash (ex: word—word—word) presents a problem though when the words are long and the reader/device offers a narrow screen. What results tends to be an awkwardly spaced portion of text. Particularly if justified text is used.

Wouldn't it make more sense to use a breakable character of some sort before or after the em dash(es) to allow better display?

I realize this may be a hyphenation and/or display issue in the software, but the reality is that many such programs are not going to be updated to correct for these situations.

[cybmole]

I am pretty sure that SONY reader/ADE , unlike kindle 3, will break a line at emdash when it needs to to improve appearance, so that is only an issue for some readers . And for all I know, the later Kindles may have improved on this.

[GrannyGrump]

Wouldn't it make more sense to use a breakable character of some sort before or after the em dash(es) to allow better display?

Also --- I may be wrong, but I think support for soft/optional hyphens is somewhat lacking in reader software and devices. I remember trying to use the &shy entity way back when, when I wanted lines to break in certain spots if hyphenation was on, and getting the "missing glyph" display of blank box/question mark when I reviewed it ADE. Maybe things have improved since I tried that.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by grannyGrumpy

Also --- I may be wrong, but I think support for soft/optional hyphens is somewhat lacking in reader software and devices. I remember trying to use the &shy entity way back when, when I wanted lines to break in certain spots if hyphenation was on, and getting the "missing glyph" display of blank box/question mark when I reviewed it ADE. Maybe things have improved since I tried that.

Oh, no, you're not wrong, but--and I have not endeavored to try this in a book being released into the wild--Amazon claims it has support now for an embedded "line break opportunity" for very long words/strings of text with no spaces (<wbr>). I'm going to ask one of our publisher clients to give it a try in one of her books, in which I know she has very long links for her authors' blogsites, etc. Not that I'm 100% sure what will happen if I endeavor to break a link in a Kindle, but I assume in theory that it breaks the display text, not the link itself.

It's funny you picked today to mention this; we've had another oddity ourselves today that increases the grey on my dome. ADE hyphenated a LOT of dialogue sentences, in one particular book, by inserting the hyphens after the opening quote mark, so immediately after the ldquo, where the ldquo occurred at the end of the line. My poor client (an ebook virgin) nearly fainted. I had to explain reflowability, my absolute favorite speech (not), and then we finally just caved and turned hyphenation off for that particular book. I don't know why it's so rampant in this book. Just think of everything that has to be "just so;" the reader pane size has to be just so, the font size just so, and the book has to have a lot of dialogue that begins inside a paragraph, rather than at the beginning.

It's peculiar to me that ADE's rendering engine has such difficulties with any header classes (you have to turn it off for header classes completely, or books in Nook are a bloody disaster--it hyphenates wherever it runs out of space. "We don't need no stinking syllables!") and yet works, for the most part, in the body...if you don't count bizarro-world scenarios like hyphenation post-quote-marks. And there's nothing you can do to fix it; we're not using thin-sp between quote marks and the text; it just does it. You also can't create any settings to preclude ladders, either. Very, very frustrating.

Hitch

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Sabardeyn

Properly formatted text with an em dash (ex: word—word—word) presents a problem though when the words are long and the reader/device offers a narrow screen. What results tends to be an awkwardly spaced portion of text. Particularly if justified text is used.

That's why I often use the alternative "space en-dash space" (when it's not at the beginning or end of a sentence), which is sometimes seen in printed books too.

The problem with em-dashes is that its handling should be language-specific. A break at an em-dash may be allowed in English, but it is highly undesirable (and wrong) in Spanish, where the usage is slightly different. The old mobipocket reader doesn't break at em-dashes, which is fine in Spanish and causes problems in English. ADE breaks at em-dashes, which is fine in English but causes havoc in Spanish.

I realize this may be a hyphenation and/or display issue in the software, but the reality is that many such programs are not going to be updated to correct for these situations.

Sadly true, and I wonder whether any program will be updated

[cybmole]

1.it is quite easy, with regex, to filp between emdash & space+endash+space

2. the former is one character, not 3, which appeals to my sense of minimisation ( I clearly spent for too much of my life coding for limited-memory 8 bit home PCs )

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by cybmole

1.it is quite easy, with regex, to filp between emdash & space+endash+space

Not so easy when you have different possibilities:

and yet—and yet -> and yet – and yet (a punctuating dash)
a bur—a hobbit -> a bur— a hobbit (a dash marking an incomplete word or speech).

[GrannyGrump]

Hitch said

inserting the hyphens after the opening quote mark,

.
Funny, I just saw this for the first time yesterday reviewing a project in ADE, and also -- oh woe, I've seen one-syllable words hypenated. I can't imagine how to avoid those, 'twould need Merlin-Magic.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Not so easy when you have different possibilities:

and yet—and yet -> and yet – and yet (a punctuating dash)
a bur—a hobbit -> a bur— a hobbit (a dash marking an incomplete word or speech).

i don't follow your examples - sorry.
can you try again with a "for dummies version" please.
I have often successfully flipped the emdash and endash approaches with no problem.
I believe one is the UK publishers standard & the other is the USA standard but I forget which way around they go.

replacing space+endash+space with emdash seems a safe replace-all command to me

replacing the tacky double dash--as found in some old books is also straightforward - it only occurs in text, not in any XML declarations.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by cybmole

i don't follow your examples - sorry.
can you try again with a "for dummies version" please.

and yet—and yet
a bur—a hobbit

Both have an unspaced em-dash, but the first one should (could) be replaced with "space en-dash space", as it's a normal dash used for punctuation, sort of a comma or a colon. And the second one is a dash used marking a broken word (burglar) or unfinished sentence, so it should (could) be left as an em-dash, with a space to separate the following text. There could be other cases.

As for the reverse transformation (en-dashes to em-dashes), it's probably safe to replace all "space en-dash space", "space en-dash" and "en-dash space" with an em-dash.

[Sabardeyn]

I know this is a bit dormant but as I needed to look something up, I cam across Wikipedia: Em Dash and I noticed that it said (emphasis added):

Long dashes ("em rules"), often with a space on either side, are normally found in pairs to enclose parenthetical statements, or singly to denote a break in the sentence:

Just thought I would note the reference for completeness.