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Dorte Hummelshoj Reading Winterlude by Quentin Bates

21 Aug 2012, 08:17 PM | Post: #11

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RE: Punctuation question

I think Celia is right. There are some differences between American and British punctuation, but I do wonder why reviewers want to waste their time - and yours - by pointing it out in books which are otherwise in good shape.

I also had one of those annoying reviews today. The reader doesn´t like the plot, the characters or the humour, which is obviously okay, but he complains about ´poor formatting´ even though he can see I have used dashes instead of quotation marks. Everybody does that in Scandinavia so I had forgotten to change it in the English version.

Well, now that problem should be resolved, but I have been calling him names Wink

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LindaGruchy Reading The Chandelier Ballroom by Elizabeth Lord

21 Aug 2012, 08:21 PM | Post: #12

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RE: Punctuation question

I have found one of the - hyphen examples in Lynda's book and it looks fine to me. The em and en dash things I suspect are after the advent of word processors or computers which are capable of these things where a typewriter is not.

There are differences in US v UK and House Style too.

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LindaGruchy Reading The Chandelier Ballroom by Elizabeth Lord

22 Aug 2012, 06:18 AM | Post: #13

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RE: Punctuation question

On further reading, I fear the reviewer has a point. The use varies in the text. Perhaps it is an anomaly in translation. I've had weird things happen with invisible commands in the html.

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lyndawrites Reading The Midnight Man by Paul Doherty

22 Aug 2012, 08:56 AM | Post: #14

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RE: Punctuation question

All right, Linda, thanks.

OK. I'll take the file down and go through it again. Tantrum

Some days I wonder why I bother writing at all.

Now, would you like to tell my husband he has to format it again? Or shall I? Smile

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LindaGruchy Reading The Chandelier Ballroom by Elizabeth Lord

22 Aug 2012, 09:20 AM | Post: #15

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RE: Punctuation question

Wait for the rest of my "observations" - if you like I could email them to you if you give me an address. Then you can print it out, hand him the sheet and retreat.

And tell him I know exactly how exasperating it is because I've been in tears over every ruddy book because of hidden html code. I now clean my mss by making it all "normal" text, removing the indent, looking for unwanted spaces, then restoring the 0.7 Indent, then making the chapter headings etc into headings. I've found different colours revealed in the book, different font sizes, unexplained gaps, exaperating in the extreme. No mow make a mobi file before I even get anywhere near Amazon KDP because that way I iron out problemsd before I start to publish (or at least, I hope I do.). I keep the text formatting as simple as possible, which leaves less to go wrong with the html. I'm not very knowledgeable with html.

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Rosen Trevithick Reading

22 Aug 2012, 09:27 AM | Post: #16

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RE: Punctuation question

Amazon once wrote to me and told me to take out all of my EN dashes because some Kindles can't cope with them. Perhaps that's what's happened here?

It's a pain. I have to convert all ENs to EMs before uploading anything.

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lyndawrites Reading The Midnight Man by Paul Doherty

22 Aug 2012, 01:19 PM | Post: #17

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RE: Punctuation question

Linda - thanks again. My email addy is at the back of Strictly Murder but I've also PM'd you with it here. I await your 'observations' with interest.

Rosen - that may well be part of the problem. I'll make sure I remove/replace them when I go through the file.

And according to The Queen's English Guide to Punctuation — a worthy society if ever there was one — there should be a space before and after an em dash.
http://queens-english-society.com...

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densewords

19 Oct 2012, 09:20 AM | Post: #18

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RE: Punctuation question

Hi Lynda,

I don't know if I already mentioned this elsewhere, but it seems to be one of those questions that, as Ernest Gowers says, drives people mad. The only real refuge is in consistency. Pick a rule and stick to it.

This blog post is a furiously detailed analysis that probably doesn't help as much. I have one very sensible author who uses hyphens for hyphenation and en dashes for everything else. I have another who has his own rules for when to use a spaced em dash and when an unspaced one. I just try to make sure his rule is always applied. None of his readers have complained so far. My theory is that when your usage is inconsistent you get more complaints. If your usage is consistent (which I think it is), then it's probably safe to ignore the complaints.

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Streaky Steve Reading Gladiatrix by Linda Gruchy

19 Oct 2012, 11:59 AM | Post: #19

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RE: Punctuation question

(19 Oct 2012 09:20 AM)densewords Wrote: Hi Lynda,

I don't know if I already mentioned this elsewhere, but it seems to be one of those questions that, as Ernest Gowers says, drives people mad. The only real refuge is in consistency. Pick a rule and stick to it.

This blog post is a furiously detailed analysis that probably doesn't help as much. I have one very sensible author who uses hyphens for hyphenation and en dashes for everything else. I have another who has his own rules for when to use a spaced em dash and when an unspaced one. I just try to make sure his rule is always applied. None of his readers have complained so far. My theory is that when your usage is inconsistent you get more complaints. If your usage is consistent (which I think it is), then it's probably safe to ignore the complaints.

I've just read through this thread and noticed the use of the word 'anal' used in quite a few posts, which reflects my view of this type of reader.

But - I also _ agree that - above all else-consistency and ---- readibility has to be _what-matters.

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