There are a number of problems that pop up regularly for Pressbooks users, where outputs just don’t look as they expect. It may happen when users imported a manuscript from Word, or just copied and pasted some text.
Why does this happen?
Usually, when you cut and paste your text chapter by chapter into Pressbooks, the system cleans the text and strips out the worst of the hidden (often detrimental) code that may come in from Word or other word processing applications while leaving the good code that will translate to ebooks and print-on-demand layouts.
However, there can be problems due to “bad” styling markup that has crept into the editing interface, often imported from MS Word. (If you're looking at your ebook export in an iPhone or iPad, here's why you shouldn't worry in this instance.)
Here is a quick list of common problems:
- Styling headings by formatting as bold instead of using the Heading tags
- Not using blockquotes for letters, quotes etc.
- Forcing certain kinds of paragraphs not to indent
- Not using correct list formatting (for bullets & numbers)
- Tags with unecessary font, colour, size, language settings, etc.
- Funky spacing
- Paragraphs not being separated properly
How can I fix this?
Whenever you see odd formatting, you can use this method to diagnose the issue:
- Determine in which chapter the problem is happening
- Go to Text / Organize and click on that chapter
- Click over from the Visual Editor to the Text Editor, where you can see any code
- Find the exact passage and inspect the code around it
- If you see any code around the passage, it may be the culprit. For example:
- Lorem Ipsum
-
Paragraph text
-
Lorem ipsum
- Save a copy of the code offline temporarily (select the whole chapter and copy it into Word, Notepad or other text application)
- Delete the unwanted code from the chapter, so that only the text remains
- Save and re-export to determine if that solved the problem.
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