NO JUSTIFICATION FOR IT

The television ad for the latest version of the Kindle contains an image of the device displaying the opening of some document. There's an ornate drop cap at the beginning, probably created by embedding a font file in the mobi and using split code to put the big capital in kf8 (Fire) devices while using a simple two em capital for older devices, where drop caps won't work. (I guess it could also be a dropped image of a capital letter.)

You can link to one of my more popular posts for information how to use drop caps. There's also a post showing you how to use embedded fonts.

But I should remind you using drop caps is problematical: You can get good vertical spacing in a few font sizes, but the big caps drift out of spec for other sizes, showing up a little too high or too low, relative to the surrounding lines. Different letters may also require different spacing specs. Getting a nice fat capital letter to look perfect in just one font size, as in the TV ad, is pretty easy.

But so much for drop caps. I think Amazon has always used them in their advertised samples.

The thing I find most interesting about the new Kindle is that the text is not justified on the right-side margin.

Elsewhere on this blog you will find my rants about right-side justification, and how it messes up the look of the page on your Kindle—depending on the font size, which you are not at liberty to specify.

Dashes and ellipses are particularly affected, which is why I make a great effort to eliminate as many of those guys as I can in my writing and editing. I have a post about that, too.

Up to now, the default mode of display is justified right margin. Amazon made a point of preferring it. They said it gave their customers the experience they desired from an ebook.

Have they changed their minds about that?

My position has always been this: If you can't hyphenate the text, don't justify the right-side margin.

I have a feeling automatic hyphenation (and it would have to be automatic, unless you had a way of locking the font size option) is still a ways off.

Is Amazon listening to complaints about justification?

It is possible to insert code into your mobi file to force non-justified text for your book. In the past Amazon has objected to the use of that code.

I've also heard some readers find non-justification of the text to be grounds for returning the book for a refund.

How you react to these facts is up to you.

If you want to go ragged on the right side, just add:

    text-align:left;
   
to your paragraph styles.

(It works in mobi and kf8 [Kindle Classic and Fire], at least according to Kindle Previewer.)