3.1 Tradeoffs

Pagination involves tradeoffs. Fixing a widow may result in a misaligned spread. Fixing that may result in a loose line or paragraph. What is acceptable in one book, or for one publisher, may be unacceptable to another. What is acceptable in one country, or language, may be unacceptable elsewhere.

3.2 Untangling the Vertical and the Horizontal

Page breaks are often line breaks. The tiniest change in kerning can make a paragraph longer or shorter, and thus create a widow or an orphan. The work of pagination, as done by typesetters, human or machine, inevitably involves the consideration of the lines of text. And so we will not try too hard to avoid talking about line breaks, when they potentially influence pagination.

4.1 Hyphenation

Text is often easier to read when words are allowed to break at the end of lines, thus avoiding massive variations in word-spacing or margins. But determining acceptable places to break words is a difficult problem:

pre-ached
wee-knights
read-just
leg-ends
ex-acting
reap-ear
co-inage

Words hyphenate differently based on pronunciation or meaning:

 photo-graph
 pho-togra-pher
 
 re-cord (verb)
 rec-ord (noun)
 
 pres-ent (verb)
 pre-sent (noun)
 
 cre-ator
 crea-ture
 

TK

in-de-pen-dent (American Heritage Dictionary)
in-de-pend-ent (Webster’s)

\hyphenation { sur-pris-ingly tan-ta-liz-ing-ly these }

4.2 Justification

5.1 Widows

A widow is when the last line(s) of a paragraph falls at the top of a page. Publishers have different standards. Most frown on a single line at the top of the page, although some are OK if that line spans at least three-quarters of the page. Others require at least two lines of a paragraph at the top of a page.

Many typesetting systems have settings to prevent widows. CSS discusses these issues in [css3-break]. Unfortunately, these systems usually create another problem when they fix the widow. In Fig. 2 Widow fixed, but pages don’t align , there’s no longer a widow at the top of the page, but since the system merely moved a line from the left page to the right, it left behind an empty line, and the pages no longer align at the bottom.

More needs to be done. Removing one line of text from each page of the spread, shown in Fig. 3 Widow fixed by “running short.” solves the problem.

5.2 Orphans

An orphan has two possible meanings in typesetting. It can refer to the minimum number of lines required before a page break (as in [css3-break]). It can also refer to the last line of a paragraph in any context. In the former context, many publishers now accept a single line of a paragraph before a page break. For the latter, standards vary widely. Some publishers want the last line to be longer than the paragraph indent. Some require one or two full words, or a certain number of characters. Most avoid having only a fragment of a word as the last line.

5.3 Constraints on page depth

In traditional typesetting, the first defense against bad breaks is to change the depth of the page. “Running long” or “running short” means including one more (or one less) line of text on each page of the spread, thus sidestepping the previously-identified issue.

A typical book design includes instructions on whether it’s acceptable to run short, long, or (more rarely) both. Often there are also constraints on how many consecutive spreads (or pages) may be altered in this way. If running both long and short, it’s usually forbidden to go from one to another without an intervening normal spread.

Running long or short may affect the space between the last line of text and a page footer or folio. Most publishers prefer footers to be in a fixed position. If, instead, the space between the last line of text and the footer is fixed, the footer is said to "bounce."

5.4 Facing Pages

If a document has facing pages, the publisher usually requires that they align top and bottom. Exceptions include:

1. It's the last page of a chapter.
2. The page contains no text—only images or tables
3. When aligning facing pages will make some other issue worse

5.5 Recto and Verso Hyphens

Publishers sometimes constrain what characters may appear before a page break. Most commonly, the right-hand page of a spread may not end with a word fragment, as the reader must turn the page before reading the rest of the word. Less common is a prohibition on the verso page ending with a hyphen.

5.6 Space Breaks and Ornaments

Many novels, and some narrative non-fiction books, include small breaks in the text. These are usually represented by one to three blank lines, or by a small ornament or dingbat. Problems arise when these breaks fall at the top or bottom of a page.

If, however, the space break falls at the bottom of the page, confusion can result. In Fig. 5 Incorrect: Space break at bottom of page , it’s hard to tell there’s a space break, as it just looks like the page is a few lines short.

In that case, asterisks or some other ornament is added to the top or bottom of a page, as a visual reminder of the break. To get everything to work out, the spread was run short, and the space break (now with ornament) pushed to the top of the second page. See Fig. 6 Space break at top of page with asterisks .

7.1 Drop caps

A drop cap is a larger-than-usual letter at the start of a paragraph, with a baseline at least one line lower than the first baseline of the paragraph. The size of drop caps is usually indicated by how many lines they occupy—two-line and three-line drop caps are the most common.

Aligning the letter vertically is a challenge. The top of the letter should align with the ascenders of the first line of text. The baseline of the letter should fall on the baseline of one of the following lines (the second for a 2-line drop cap, etc.).

The horizontal position of the drop cap and the surrounding text is also an issue, as variations in glyph shapes may require increasing or decreasing space to the right of the drop cap, and in some cases separate adjustments may be required for each line adjacent to the drop cap.

The position of a drop cap in relation to the left margin may also need to be adjusted. Letters like "C" may need to move left slightly to visually align with the left margin.

A drop cap may be desired on a paragraph which starts with a punctuation mark, most often a quotation mark. In this case, one option is to delete the quotation mark entirely.

Note

CSS needs a better mechanism to define drop caps. Right now, people typically apply a span to the letter, and then use:

span.dropcap {
float: left;
font-size: 5.3em;
line-height: .85em;
margin-bottom: -.1em;
}

This requires much trial and error to get the drop cap both the right height, and with the right vertical position. But what if the font changes?

As you can see, when the font changes, the alignment is not preserved, and the drop cap may even crash into the adjacent text.

7.2 Raised caps

A raised cap is a large letter used to start a paragraph, which uses the same baseline as the rest of the first line.

8.1 Content

Running heads and footers may contain:

1. Content from the document: book title, chapter or part titles, author name(s). Indexes and notes sections may have running heads to identify which entries are on a particular page.
2. Content intended only for running heads: shortened versions of chapter titles…
3. Page or section numbers
4. Chapter numbers
5. ornaments or other decorative type
6. Copyright statements
7. Date and/or time stamps
8. File names
9. Version numbers
10. combinations of the above

In some cases the content of running heads may have an internal structure—a chapter title might have an italic word—or may require different text styles or fonts.

In this example, the running header contains the author name, the page number, and an ornament. This seemingly simple case was quite complex, using [css3-gcpm]-like features implemented by PrinceXML.

@page body:left {
  @top-center { 
    content: flow(verso);
    }
  }

p.verso-cus {
  flow: static(verso);
  content: prince-glyph-index(80);
  font-family: 'Type Embellishments One';
  font-size: 10pt;
  text-align: center;
}

p.verso-cus:before {
  content: counter(page);
  display: inline;
  padding-right: 15pt;
  font-family: 'Garamond 3 LT Std';
  font-style: italic;
  font-size: 10pt;
}

p.verso-cus:after {
  content: string(flow-header-left-rw);
  display: inline;
  padding-left: 15pt;
  font-family: 'Garamond 3 LT Std';
  font-style: italic;
  font-size: 10pt;
}

8.2 Placement

Running heads are generally omitted from the first pages of chapters.

9.1 General Considerations

TK

9.2 Heads at the top of a page

When a head falls at the top of a page, a spacing adjustment is often necessary. Here's a typical arrangement, with a line and a half of space above the head, and a half-line-space below, so that the text stays on the proper baselines.

If that head appears at the top of the page, the subsequent text will be off by a half-line.

Everything works out if we add a half-line-space back.

9.3 Heads at the bottom of a page

A head should never be the last thing on a page; it must be followed by two or three lines of text.

9.4 Bridge heads, side heads, and run-in heads

TK

10.1 TK

Some things to note about this image

1. the caption and image are treated as a unit
2. Text runs around the image+caption
3. image runs right up to the gutter of the page (i.e. extends beyond usual content area)

10.2 Inline images

TK

10.3 Bleeds

TK

11.1 Alignment

Many tables have specialized requirements for the alignment of cells in a given column.

|   445.85  |
| 12345.6   |
|     1.234 |
|      .1   |

11.2 Table widths

In print, tables are not randomly sized but typically set to one of a few fixed widths. This requirement necessitates that a composition engine know how to “snap to” one of the desired widths. This may help show relationships between separate tables.

13.1 Inline footnotes and multiple footnote regions

Some types of footnotes may be displayed inline, as in the top Fig. 19 Inline footnotes . Other books (see Fig. 20 Multiple footnote regions ) may have two separate streams of footnotes, requiring two footnote regions.

13.2 At the foot of what?

Footnotes usually fall at the bottom of the page, but may need to be at placed at the end of a column, table, sidebar, or other document structure.

13.3 Breaking footnotes across pages

Some footnotes can extend across more than one page. Limits on the size of the footnote area(s) may be required, so that a page containing only footnotes is avoided.

13.4 Numbering

In addition to the usual numbering schemes, footnotes may be identified by a sequence of symbols: *, †, ‡, and §. This sequence usually restarts every page. If there are more than four footnotes per page, the symbols are doubled, tripled, etc.

17.1 Breaking equations

TK

17.2 Numbering equations

TK

17.3 Aligning equations

Many educational publishers require that all equations on a page align on the equals sign.

    x + 3z = 7 + 2y
2x + y + z = 4
   10 + 2y = 3x + 2z

19.1 Language-specific spacing rules

19.2 Em-dashes and en-dashes

To space or not to space? That is the question. Even within publishing houses, arguments continue over the proper display of em-dashes. Some imprints at Hachette use closed em-dashes, others insist on thin spaces around em-dashes. If the same book is to be published in the United Kingdom, em-dashes would be replaced with en-dashes, with larger spaces around them.

Given the subtlety of many of these rules, it’s helpful to use CSS to generate typographically-sophisticated output from material written by lay authors, or to adapt content to varying publisher or language requirements.

body {
prince-text-replace: "—" "\200A—\200A";
}

20.1 Education

• College textbooks
• Elhi
• Language
• Study guides

20.2 Trade

• Fiction
• Narrative nonfiction
• Children’s
• YA
• Religious
  • Bibles
• Travel
• How-to
• Manga/Comics/Graphic Novels

20.3 STEM

20.4 Reference

• Legal
• Dictionaries

22.1 Book optimization

In trade publishing, we often know how many pages will be in a book before it is written. The nature of printing and binding also mandate that the number of pages in a book be some multiple of eight, sixteen, or thirty-two pages. Publishers often limit how many blank pages are allowed at the end of a book.

22.2 Chapter optimization

A chapter that ends with only a few lines of text looks like a mistake, and wastes paper (or electrons!) Generally a page should contain at least five lines of text.