Do not hyphenate paragraphs in ePubs

[Alan]

Do paragraph styes with Do not hyphenate carry over into ePubs? This does not seem to be the case in 4.4.5.4.


Alan

[admin]

Atlantis does not save the “do not hyphenate” paragraph attribute to the EPUB files. If I am correct, there are barely any eBook-readers supporting automatic hyphenation.

Why specifically do you need this attribute in eBooks?

[Alan]

Hi admin,
I use it occasionally for paragraph styles to emulate paragraphs, mainly on Title pages, that I have been scanning into my computer to read on my Kobo eReader (ePubs). Kobo does support hyphenation when the paragraphs are justified, as all my first line indent paragraphs are by default. Wednesday was the first day I noticed this hyphenation occur but since I rarely make justified paragraphs with Do not hyphenate it could be many months since I have seen it not hyphenate a word in a justified paragraph, alternately it could be in the past that the Kobo hyphenation dictionary did not have a word in its dictionary that caused a justified paragraph to have a wide white space.

Alan

[admin]

I must say I do not understand why you need the “do not hyphenate” attribute in eBooks. This attribute is intended to suppress automatic hyphenation and thus increase the chances for “wide white space” in justified paragraphs, not otherwise.

[Alan]

Hi admin,
The use of Do not hyphenate is a style that some (not many) book publishers use in specific circumstances (never in regular body text) to indicate the text is special/different from the rest. It may indicate a handwritten note is being read or it is a list. Given it is rare there is no rhyme or reason to it that I have seen. I know it from the thousands of fiction books I have read by the excessive white space that draws my eye to rows of text without hyphens when there are obvious hyphenations to severely reduce that white space. This is all to say that it is only a choice that a publisher has made.

Alan

[Alan]

Hi admin,
To be specific, what triggered this was a list of Cast of Characters.

Alan

[admin]

The next build of Atlantis will export the “Do not hyphenate” paragraph attribute to EPUB. But I would call it a very minor addition because very few eReaders offer automatic hyphenation and there are very few scenarios when automatic hyphenation needs to be suppressed. Another question is whether a particular eReader with support for automatic hyphenation also supports suppression of hyphenation for individual paragraphs (the "hyphens" CSS attribute).