Many authors mistakenly believe they should observe the rules they were taught in typing class when formatting their books. On the contrary, nothing spotlights the fact that your book was not produced by professionals like not observing basic typesetting rules. At Fideli Pubishing, we make sure your book looks professionally designed and typeset.
Here are some of the common errors we want to help you avoid:
• No hyphenation. Hyphenation is important whether text is justified or ragged-right. Without hyphenation, justified text will have loose lines which slow reading and can reduce reader comprehension. Most pagination programs have an auto setting for hyphenation allowing limits of two or three hyphens in a row. A good typesetter will also look at the text and insert manual hyphens where lines still look spacey.
• Setting the entire text of the book in a bold or script font.
• Two spaces between the period at the end of a sentence and the first letter of the next sentence. Books which are correctly typeset use proportional type, which gives each letter its own width and space including the correct spacing for punctuation.
• Spacey lines. Adjustments must be made to default program settings in even the page layout programs. Adjustments should be made according to the typeface used. Use of hyphens greatly reduces this problem.
• Obvious attempts to stretch the text for a higher page count. This could include oversized margins, extra large type and excessive leading. There are legitimate ways to add pages to the text, including starting chapters halfway down the page, starting chapters on right hand pages, taking some extra space for chapter titles, an extra page for the start of a section and inserting quotes or important statements on pages by themselves. None of the acceptable techniques should be used to the extent that they become obvious.
• Excessive use of underline instead of bold or italic type. Both bold and italic are used for emphasis. Underlining should be avoided because it creates an ugly display. If underlines are required, they should be made by the typographer by placing a rule beneath the words using appropriate spacing.
• Half-inch indents. A quarter inch, or two em-spaces, is more appropriate for typeset books.
Use of a word processing program instead of a pagination program. Programs specifically designed to lay out pages have better spacing for text so that pages are uniform and don't look "spacey." These programs include InDesign, QuarkXpress, PageMaker, FrameMaker, etc.
• Uneven ellipses due to use of three or four periods in a row rather than the ellipses symbol. The spaces between the periods should be even. The ellipses should never break between lines either.
• Incorrect margins. Books must have margins that account for the binding (where the book is held together), which necessitates having a larger margin on the left for right-hand pages and on the right for left-hand pages to keep the type from being bound into the side of the book. Readers also have a comfort zone regarding the other margins - they should neither be too close to the edge of the book nor should they be so large that the white space is obvious.
• Excessive page decoration and fonts. A symbol appropriate to the content of the book can be effective when used to indicate breaks, and using a typeface appropriate to the book's content for chapter headers can also add ambiance to the work. The book should never be "decorated" by a myriad of symbols, nor should it be peppered with an array of different typefaces. Using either of these practices in your book is distracting and confusing to the reader and makes the book look amateurish.