[Joshua Rigley]

Hi all. I'm formatting my ebook for the kindle, and in the kindle previewer, I see something that's somewhat annoying. There's all these extra spaces distributed throughout the text. And not just a couple, but several. It looks awful.

Does anyone have any idea on how to make it so that the text is spaced normally? Thanks.

 

[daringnovelist]

Hi all. I'm formatting my ebook for the kindle, and in the kindle previewer, I see something that's somewhat annoying. There's all these extra spaces distributed throughout the text. And not just a couple, but several. It looks awful.

Does anyone have any idea on how to make it so that the text is spaced normally? Thanks.

You're seeing the effects of that #&%$! full-justified text, which Amazon has forced down the throats of Kindle users. Basically every line is a different length, but to make it line up on both the left and right, they space some lines out more.

Typographers used to do that with print because it saves paper. There is NO reason to do it with electronic type -- except that they want it to look like a paperback, I guess.

Apparently Amazon allowed users to choose whether they wanted left-justified or full-justified text in the first generation Kindles. They disabled the option in later versions. I'm told you can hack the invisible settings file to restore the right to choose your own justification, but I haven't tried it.

Camille

 

[Terrence OBrien]

USB copy the file to a Kindle and see how it looks. The previewer doesn't always display like the Kindle does.

 

[39179]

Agreed - the previewer can't be relied upon. Mine looked very different in the previewer than it did on the Kindle. Also, have you tried condensing the character spacing on the lines that have the problem?

 

[CraigInOregon]

Hi all. I'm formatting my ebook for the kindle, and in the kindle previewer, I see something that's somewhat annoying. There's all these extra spaces distributed throughout the text. And not just a couple, but several. It looks awful.

Does anyone have any idea on how to make it so that the text is spaced normally? Thanks.

The Kindle Previewer is pretty bad.

Worse is the previewer in KDP... but yet my book turned out beautifully once it was published, even though it had text off-page on both margins and other "preview" horrors.

I've seen folks complain about this before I experienced it myself... it's an issue perennially on Amazon's to-do list, but it never gets addressed.

Kind of sad, too, this is one area where PubIt is superior... Their previewer is clean and sharp-looking.

 

[Justin Alexander]

Typographers used to do that with print because it saves paper.

How would it save paper, exactly?

The truth is, people full-justify text because it's more aesthetically pleasing. Which is also why Amazon does it. (Although they certainly could do a better job of it at times. Which is weird, because automatically justifying text is basically a solved problem and has been for decades.)

 

[CraigInOregon]

Note on a possibility.

Make sure your finalized file uploaded to Amazon contains only single spaces between sentences, or things will end up looking wonky.

A lot of writers are in the habit of double-spacing between sentences because it's an old typist's habit.

Modern layout/design prefers single-spaces between sentences.

If you're someone in the habit of putting two spaces in between sentences, this can be rectified with a find/replace search, entering two spaces in the find dialog, and one space in the replace dialog, and repeating the process until it returns no successful replacements.

 

[Joshua Rigley]

Thanks for your feedback everyone. You've been very helpful. I'm in the process of publishing my first short story now.