Spliting Up Words.

[Denv12]

One of the ongoing problems I keep finding in books where the author hasnt got room to finish a word on one line then continues the word on the next line.The problem is worse when an author does it frequently throughout their book.
Its really irresponsible to do that.Its distracting. I make sure that whenever I'm typing I out the whole word on to the next line.I do that on social media,when I'm typing letters,emails,etc.I just makes reading better.



Another problem I've seen many times is when an author starts a new sentence at the end of a line.Worse than that its when they start that new sentence where there is only room for one letter like "I".Its so out of place.Nothing wrong with starting a new sentence on a new line.

[moderntimes]

Books are of course mostly full justified. That means that there is a smooth left and right margin.

If a writer continues a word on the second line, are you talking about hyphenating a multi-syllable word? Like:

.... the concert was extra-
ordinary ...

Right? Some publishers hyphenate, some do not. But either way, the automatic typesetter system that is set for "full justify" has several options. They can turn off or turn on hyphenation where a word "breaks" at the end of a line. There are also rules for doing this. For example, short words with 2 syllables aren't hyphenated, such as:

I was very hun-
gry.

This is never done. Instead only longer words with multiple syllables are hyphenated to break across the line.

So how does the system perform full justification? If you've ever played with this on a mechanical typewriter, you have to add an extra blank space between words. But professional typesetting, from the old days when we had Linotype machines, the spacing between words was not either 1 or 2 full spaces ("regular" blank spaces between words are called "n-quads" because the space is equal to a lower case "n"). But to make the line fit, you'd insert an "m-quad" (the space the width of the lower case "m") and add them as needed so that the end of the line was even to the margin.

The other thing is that some type fonts are variable, some are not. That means that the width of each letter is variable with the actual width of the character. This is what we're using here, where the letter "i" is narrow and the letter "M" is wider.

Now electronic typesetting does this even better. Not just adjusting the spacing between words (varying the spaces proportionally, not just an "m-quad" or an "n-quad") but making small adjustments between the words, and also, if you select the option, the electronic system will also adjust "kerning" -- the spaces between each letter in a word.

If you mess around with MS-Word you can get most of this to work. MS-Word has lots of justification options, and electronic typesetting has even more options.

Point being, if a book-length line is used (the whole width of the page), it's possible to adjust the spacing between words (justification) AND the spacing between letters of a word (kerning) so that you don't need to hyphenate. This is the general trend these days in publishing.

However, for a newspaper column width (much more narrow that a book page) the use of hyphenation is generally needed for full justification. As you can understand, if a printed line is longer, there's more opportunity to adjust the spacing and make the line full justified, whereas a shorter line such as you have in newspapers, the option to adjust spacing is less, and so you need to hyphenate.

What I've seen in general publishing is that the trend is to adjust spacing and kerning so that you don't have a hyphenated word. My publisher, for example, doesn't generally have hyphenated words in their books. This is now more available because electronic typesetting has more spacing options than mechanical typesetting. This is I think a good trend.

Hope this helps. And yeah, too many hyphenated words at the end of a justified line are annoying.

-- 29 Mar 2016, 14:03 --

You have to also understand that the "author" doesn't "type" words in a book. The author submits to the publisher in MS-Word, with a ragged right margin, no hyphenation at all. It's the publisher who does the hyphenation, not the author. This is of course done with professional electronic typesetting.

Your 2nd point is about starting a sentence on the end of a line. Electronic typesetting systems are also "smart" enough to be set to prevent this -- if the word is only 1 or 2 characters, the spacing of the "parent" line is adjusted so that the sentence that begins with a short word is moved to the next line. All these features are set by the publisher / printer.

When I submit my novels to my publisher, I used standard MS-Word font Times New Roman, 12 point, double spaced. This is standard submission format.

The editor and proofreaders review my book and send me back suggested changes. We use the MS-Word feature called "Track Changes" which keeps the changes in red, the original in blue, and so I can decide whether to accept or refuse the suggested changes. This goes back and forth a couple times, then we're all in agreement as to the text of the book. All of this is done via MS-Word.

Then my publisher sends the MS-Word text to a professional print house, who formats the book in an electronic image of the physical printing which will then be done. I am emailed this, usually in Adobe PDF, because the book's text is now reset into the full justified format (even right margins) with electronic page numbers at the bottom of each page, title of the book at the top, just as it will appear in physical print.

My editor and I carefully review this version, because occasionally someone will accidentally set the type fonts wrong, get the page numbers wrong, maybe blur the author's photo at the end of the book, other small glitches.

After this is reviewed and hopefully no changes are needed -- maybe a couple of teeny tweaks -- then I authorize that the book can go to print. It's then created in both Amazon Kindle format and physical print format, and pretty soon I get a box of freebie new books to give to friends and so on.

All the concerns you have are controlled in the electronic typesetting process, and each publisher can choose whether to allow hyphenation or not, font size, general print layout, and so on. The author may not always have the "power" to change this, unless of course the author is maybe Stephen King, ha ha.

[Denv12]

[quote="moderntimes"]Books are of course mostly full justified. That means that there is a smooth left and right margin.

If a writer continues a word on the second line, are you talking about hyphenating a multi-syllable word? Like:

.... the concert was extra-
ordinary ...

Right? Some publishers hyphenate, some do not. But either way, the automatic typesetter system that is set for "full justify" has several options. They can turn off or turn on hyphenation where a word "breaks" at the end of a line. There are also rules for doing this. For example, short words with 2 syllables aren't hyphenated, such as:

Thank you morderntimes for explaining this.Now it all makes sense why it happens.I'm glad authors arent to blame.Which means there's room for improvement if we can get the right invention to the right place to correct the problems.

[moderntimes]

Well, authors are "sort of" to blame.

We get the final galley proofs, which is an actual image of the pages to be printed. This includes things like the copyright page, dedication page, the author's bio at the back, and in my case, a couple of chapters of my next novel, now in progress.

So if we find a bunch of problems, we have every right to get the publisher to change things before the book goes to print.

Now there's a sensible balance here. For example, if you submit your "ready to go" novel, the publisher then sets it up for printing, and then at the last minute you decide to make a whole bunch of changes to your book, out of the blue. Very likely, your publisher may charge you for the 2nd pass re-formatting and take that cost out of your upcoming royalties, to the tune of maybe 200 bucks. heh heh

But if you find that your text was fine, no changes, but the formatting got messed up -- it happens all the time -- then the publisher of course fixes the bad formatting free. For example, in my 2nd novel, someone transferred my text fine, but accidentally deleted ALL the italics. As you know, italics are used for things like movie or song titles, whispered dialogue, etc. So as soon as I got the galley proofs** I emailed my publisher and they restored all the italics. Stuff happens.

** "Galley proofs" are the soon-to-be printed format. They are the final setup. These days, galley proofs are 100% electronic, and if you've read a Kindle book, you understand. It's a precise photographic-type image of the print version, exactly as it will look when printed. So galley proofs will have, for example, the book title at the top of the page, the page numbers at the bottom, and go to a new page for each new chapter. The print font and layout will also be exactly what the actual physical book will look like.

The modern electronic typesetting systems are superb. All that is needed is to set the options correctly. If the publisher doesn't want hyphenation, it can be switched "off" or "on" and there are all sorts of options, such as only hyphenating very long words and keeping shorter words intact. You can even select a break point for the number of syllables allowed, where a 4 syllable word will be intact, a word with more than 4 syllables hyphenated at the end of the line. All these layout things are variable and as you can see from the professionally published books, as from Simon & Schuster or other big houses, you can see how varied the setups can be.

Now for self publishing, authors will likely use the software system "CreateSpace" which allows a precise book-style layout, and the author can then post the book on Amazon and set up a Kindle version and a print version both. Users of CreateSpace software can do the whole thing themselves, or pay someone to do the setup, starting with the MS-Word novel.

I've never used CreateSpace since my novels are professionally published, and all the formatting was done by my publisher, and I paid not a red cent. But in my tech writing career, I used Adobe high-level software for engineering and scientific documentation, layout meant for online use, with built-in jumps when clicked on. For example if you were to see a layout of a "christmas tree" (the undersea pumping stations on the seabed floor that route crude oil thru a complex system of valves and pipes). And you can see a particular valve or control, and you click on that part, it expands automatically to a blowup image of the part, with numbers, and you can then click on these items and get meticulous assembly and repair instructions. Stuff like that.

I can say that writing a book using, say, MS-Word (and I'm fairly expert in Word) is totally different from formatting a book for print or Kindle by using CreateSpace or another software package.

So a fledgling author who wants to self publish may wish to pay for the formatting, first getting an estimate, and pay someone to run the CreateSpace setup for them. Some may find CreateSpace easy to use, and do the work themselves. That's their decision.

I'd also recommend that any new writer have a review and edit done professionally, either actually paying someone or finding a very sharp friend to do it for maybe a couple of free dinners. For me, since my books are professionally published, the editors review my books for me and make suggestions, and we work together to make the book the best possible.

And likewise, for self publishing, maybe invest a couple hundred bucks to get someone to professionally do the print layout for you.

Each to one's own. I'm 74 but I've got decades of computer experience, mostly science and engineering, as well as very high-level documentation. So I can do most anything I want, if I choose to take a bit of time to familiarize myself with the software. But hey, I'm weird -- ha ha -- having a chemistry degree, lots math, and also a major in English lit.

Not everyone is a writer AND an editor. We have to know our limits and get help if we need to, sometimes paying for it.

[demetria]

I remember photo-typesetting and Linotype equipment. Changing to Microsoft Word I thought brought less fine control; I was not impressed with it's kerning at all at the time. Perhaps it has been improved over the years.