# Amazon removes book because of hyphenated words



## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

This is rather worrying. The automated responses must be particularly frustrating.

https://graemereynolds.wordpress.com/2014/12/14/hyphen-hate-when-amazon-went-to-war-against-punctuation/


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Lydniz said:


> I would feel more sympathy if his website didn't make my eyes bleed.


I felt exactly the same, but thought he had enough problems without mentioning that


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

I too had to stop half-way through the blog. Small white text on a black background is too hard on these old eyes. 

I will say this, it's far easier to go with the flow on Amazon than to try to paddle upstream.  

Had I received that email, the hyphens would have been removed and the book resubmitted within the hour. Then while it's back up and selling, I'd reply to the email asking for clarification on what style the mighty Zon prefers its readers to read.


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## Mike_Author (Oct 19, 2013)

Yet another example of Amazon applying rules haphazardly.  Scamlets written by someone with negligible English language skills are ok, hyphens are not.  Authors with blatant fake review scams have their reviews stay, while other authors with no reviews end up having their only review taken down due to a perceived connection with the author that doesn't exist (I have heard that a review coming from the same city is sometimes enough to trigger alarm!)


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## Ravenandblack (Jan 27, 2014)

Mike_Author said:


> Yet another example of Amazon applying rules haphazardly. Scamlets written by someone with negligible English language skills are ok, hyphens are not. Authors with blatant fake review scams have their reviews stay, while other authors with no reviews end up having their only review taken down due to a perceived connection with the author that doesn't exist (I have heard that a review coming from the same city is sometimes enough to trigger alarm!)


This. So frustrating.
I once had an alert from Amazon about a typo a reader had noticed, and I appreciated this feedback. But this is the first I've heard of actually taking down books.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

It is particularly stupid on Amazon's part, but it's easily rectified: upload a non-hyphenated file, get Amazon to accept it, wait for Amazon to go away and then quietly reupload the original.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

For those who find this or other websites difficult to read but want to read the content--check to see if you have Reader Mode (I think Macs have this as part of Safari?).  Both Safari and Mercury browser on my iPad have it--it changes a website into a nice clean read with black text on a white background.  I just click on a blue "R" icon in the URL bar.

In other browsers on the PC, I think it's either there or can be added via a third-party tool.  It seems to be part of Internet Explorer 11 in Windows 8.1.

Just a tip as people will for some unknown reason use white text on a blackground.  

Betsy


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Also, while I agree that it seems like an over-reaction on Amazon's part (should that be hyphenated? ), my other question is whether all the words are actually correctly hyphenated?  I mean, the readers aren't ALWAYS wrong.   *ducks and runs*

Betsy


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Also, while I agree that it seems like an over-reaction on Amazon's part (should that be hyphenated? ), my other question is whether all the words are actually correctly hyphenated? I mean, the readers aren't ALWAYS wrong.  *ducks and runs*
> 
> Betsy


This was answered in the blog. The writer is an IT expert and has checked and re-checked (or rechecked) to make sure hyphens haven't appeared in the wrong place.


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## Lady Runa (May 27, 2012)

Mike_Author said:
 

> Yet another example of Amazon applying rules haphazardly. Scamlets written by someone with negligible English language skills are ok, hyphens are not. Authors with blatant fake review scams have their reviews stay, while other authors with no reviews end up having their only review taken down due to a perceived connection with the author that doesn't exist (I have heard that a review coming from the same city is sometimes enough to trigger alarm!)


Oh, absolutely. To add insult to injury, the KDP spell check (the one it runs when you upload the book file) is packed with glitches, highlighting some perfectly normal words. And no, it doesn't like hyphens either.


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## Lady Runa (May 27, 2012)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> For those who find this or other websites difficult to read but want to read the content--check to see if you have Reader Mode (I think Macs have this as part of Safari?). Both Safari and Mercury browser on my iPad have it--it changes a website into a nice clean read with black text on a white background. I just click on a blue "R" icon in the URL bar.
> 
> In other browsers on the PC, I think it's either there or can be added via a third-party tool. It seems to be part of Internet Explorer 11 in Windows 8.1.
> 
> ...


Excellent advice, thank you very much. I stopped reading white-on-black websites a long time ago. Another tip: when I'm really desperate for the content, I click "Select all" which highlights the print turning it purple-on-white.


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## Carol Davis (Dec 9, 2013)

Could they be talking about the automatic hyphenation option that you can select in Word? If he's got that turned on, the offensive hyphens might not show up on his computer screen, but on someone's Kindle the book might be loaded with them.

I'm talking about the option that automatically breaks words with a hyphen at the end of a line, so that the right-hand justification doesn't insert long runs of white space. I've seen that in ebooks now and then, and it _is_ a little annoying. You'd end up with something like this:

I mean the option that automa-
tically breaks words with a hy-
phen at the end of a line, so 
that the right-hand justifica-
tion doesn't insert long runs 
of white space.

I'm willing to bet that that's the problem.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

Carol Davis said:


> I'm willing to bet that that's the problem.


You-could-be-right!


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

Yes. We Brits do use more hyphens. 

So Amazon can scan for what they deem to be excessive hyphenation but can't seem to find word-for-word copies of previously published books.

Hmmmmm...


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## zoe tate (Dec 18, 2013)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> I will say this, it's far easier to go with the flow on Amazon than to try to paddle upstream.
> 
> Had I received that email, the hyphens would have been removed and the book resubmitted within the hour. Then while it's back up and selling, I'd reply to the email asking for clarification on what style the mighty Zon prefers its readers to read.


And there speaks a professional. 

Somehow, I think you also wouldn't have an author website whose appearance and style immediately drives away a significant proportion of its visitors, either.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

David S. said:


> For example, "no-one." I looked it up and turns out there is a case to be made for it.


A case to be made for it? I was under the firm impression that this was the correct spelling.


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## zoe tate (Dec 18, 2013)

Lydniz said:


> A case to be made for it? I was under the firm impression that this was the correct spelling.


So was I (and so are my publishers).


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## Anna Drake (Sep 22, 2014)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> Had I received that email, the hyphens would have been removed and the book resubmitted within the hour. Then while it's back up and selling, I'd reply to the email asking for clarification on what style the mighty Zon prefers its readers to read.


Good point, Wayne!


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

David S. said:


> This isn't just worrying. It should strike fear into the hearts of everyone here. The very notion that one person, somewhere on the planet, can complain about something utterly insignificant, or even blatantly lie about it, resulting in an author's book being taken down for even a day, is outrageous. If someone decides to go on a rampage about incorrect ellipses Amazon will have to remove hundreds of thousands of books.
> 
> Out of curiosity over what could have triggered the complaint, I took a look at the sample. There weren't all that many hyphens, but some did seem curious. For example, "no-one." I looked it up and turns out there is a case to be made for it. There were a couple of others that I wouldn't have hyphenated, but on looking them up it turns out the author was right and I would have been wrong. I would not have hyphenated "mid thirties" but he did. He was right. On the flip side, I would have hyphenated "son-of-a-*****" but he didn't. Again, he was right.
> 
> ...


If you scroll down to all the comments you will see a discussion on this. He is an IT specialist and spent a lot of money on editing.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

I think 'no-one' might be a style guide thingy. So perhaps as long as you keep it consistent thorought the book all should be okay.

And let _no-one_, and I mean absolutely _no one_, tell you any differently! 

'Noone' yuk!


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## RyanAndrewKinder (Dec 14, 2014)

We should report Flowers For Algernon. Reason: Excessive grammatical errors.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

zoe tate said:


> So was I (and so are my publishers).


Phew! I thought for a second I must have been getting it wrong for years.


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## cub06h (Dec 14, 2014)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> I will say this, it's far easier to go with the flow on Amazon than to try to paddle upstream.


Just so! I have been reading and posting on the KDP forum for seven years, and every week some newbie comes in, demanding that "Amazon" or "Kindle" change some part of its platform.

I haven't read the bleeding eye blog post, but I am astonished by the problem. In the early days, the Kindle platform regarded hyphenated or em-dashed words or phrases as a single word, causing great gaps in a justified line, or a sudden very short line. But a year or so ago, this problem went away. From my experience, Kindle will break a hyphenated or dashed word or phrase at the end of the line. (And just when I had gone through most of my books and eliminated hyphens wherever I could, and adopted British dashes (a space, an en dash, another space) to avoid this problem.

So I find it hard to believe that Amazon has anything against hyphens, if it has rejiggered its system to allow them to function as they do on print editions.


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## Guest (Dec 15, 2014)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> If you scroll down to all the comments you will see a discussion on this. He is an IT specialist and spent a lot of money on editing.


"IT specialist" does not mean "grammar specialist." You really should read some of the emails our IT dept sends out!

Nor does "spending lots of money on editing" mean anything. You can spend $2000 on a content editor, but if you don't have a PROOFREADER who actually checks the final version before upload that doesn't mean much. And all the editing in the world won't help you if the document is formatted wrong.

I am inclined to believe this is a formatting issue and not an editing issue. As Carol noted, it could be a problem with the original formatting in the Word document that prevents the text from flowing properly when a reader changes the font size or style or is reading on a phone.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> "IT specialist" does not mean "grammar specialist." You really should read some of the emails our IT dept sends out!
> 
> Nor does "spending lots of money on editing" mean anything. You can spend $2000 on a content editor, but if you don't have a PROOFREADER who actually checks the final version before upload that doesn't mean much. And all the editing in the world won't help you if the document is formatted wrong.
> 
> I am inclined to believe this is a formatting issue and not an editing issue. As Carol noted, it could be a problem with the original formatting in the Word document that prevents the text from flowing properly when a reader changes the font size or style or is reading on a phone.


This is from the comment section.

Are you sure the complaint was about compound-modifier hyphens (like that one) and not about code for word-break hyphens at the ends of lines having been inadvertently left in the text that was converted to Kindle format? Because that does cause hyph-ens to appear at rand-om in the middle of lines and it is in-deed quite annoy-ing to read.
But if that's not it, then, yes, Amazon are being ineffably stupid.

Archie Valparaiso said this on	December 14, 2014 at 10:04 pm | Reply
0 0 Rate This

Yes, I am certain because I hand craft every ebook in html and have 20 years experience as an IT quality assurance bod. Every ebook I put out is free from pesky little formatting errors like that because I am a professional software tester and it would be pretty f**king embarrassing if I put out a bit of dodgy software


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Just browsing the look inside it appears his hyphens look like en dashes, but that's still a silly reason to pull a book. Now his complete avoidance of dialogue tags however...


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## Guest (Dec 15, 2014)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> Yes, I am certain because I hand craft every ebook in html and have 20 years experience as an IT quality assurance bod. Every ebook I put out is free from pesky little formatting errors like that because I am a professional software tester and it would be pretty f**king embarrassing if I put out a bit of dodgy software


And yet he produces a website with black background and tiny white font. I understand what he is claiming. But what he claims contradicts what I actually SEE from him.

And I know that sounds petty, but it is actually relevant to the conversation. IT people are notorious for designing things based on how they _want_ people to use them instead of how people _actually will_ use it. When he hand-coded it, did he remember that people can change the font size or style on their Kindles? I routinely have fights with our IT people because they will code out programs to do things in ways that are completely opposite from our work processes, because they have no clue how we actually need the programs to work.

I think people know I am not a blind Amazon fangirl. I've been very critical about some of Amazon's decisions and actions. But at the same time, I also know people tend to make things worse by assuming malice (he implies this is because he took the book out of Select). When people walk into situations assuming conspiracies, it becomes easy to make things worse.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Monique said:


> Just browsing the look inside it appears his hyphens look like en dashes, but that's still a silly reason to pull a book. Now his complete avoidance of dialogue tags however...


Ah, yes, they are. Maybe that's the reason. It would certainly annoy me as a reader. Ditto the absence of dialogue tags, although I suppose that's a style thing.


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## MajesticMonkey (Sep 3, 2013)

It's scary that this can happen but as far as I understand it, this was a valid complaint that could have been handled swiftly by have the right kind of mental attitude.

It appears she didn't want to accept something could have been wrong the the file after she spent all that money on it and wanted to win an argument rather than make money.

Oh well. I guess she (hopefully) learned a valuable lesson and doesn't make this mistake again. It would warm my heart! ;-)


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## I&#039;m a Little Teapot (Apr 10, 2014)

Lydniz said:


> Phew! I thought for a second I must have been getting it wrong for years.


No, you're doing it right. But here in America we spell it _no one_. At least that's what my copy editors tell me to do when I try to hyphenate it. 

Every time someone spells it _noone_ Santa kills a puppy.


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## Moist_Tissue (Dec 6, 2013)

I see a slippery slope developing. In the last week, we've seen a humorous book about As pulled. This blog post is about another book being pulled because of excessive hyphen usage. I know posters on here complain that they get one star reviews because of their activity on this forum. I imagine that the next step will be that those posters' more successful books will be tagged by vengeful folks and their books will get pulled down.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Moist_Tissue said:


> I see a slippery slope developing. In the last week, we've seen a humorous book about As pulled. This blog post is about another book being pulled because of excessive hyphen usage. I know posters on here complain that they get one star reviews because of their activity on this forum. I imagine that the next step will be that those posters' more successful books will be tagged by vengeful folks and their books will get pulled down.


Apparently it took just one complaint for the book to be removed. I wonder about British spelling being tagged as typos and ending up the same


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## SpringfieldMH (Feb 2, 2013)

As others have noted, the e-book is using something other than hyphens (em dash?) as hyphens.

The e-book uses "razor−filled" instead of "razor-filled".

Visually, probably not a problem or that noticeable. 

But to a spell checker, style checker or text-to-speech program, that could prove problematic... though they could presumably be tuned to treat the one as the other.

P.S.  I copy/pasted "razor−filled" from the e-book's preview on Amazon's web site into various word processors, hex editors, text-to-speech programs, to see what would happen. In some cases, the em dash(?) gets changed to a hyphen during the paste. Where the em dash(?) survived the paste, the reaction was varied. Some spell checkers flagged it, some didn't. Some text-to-speech apps garbled it, some treated it as a hyphen.


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## RyanAndrewKinder (Dec 14, 2014)

Moist_Tissue said:


> I see a slippery slope developing. In the last week, we've seen a humorous book about As pulled. This blog post is about another book being pulled because of excessive hyphen usage. I know posters on here complain that they get one star reviews because of their activity on this forum. I imagine that the next step will be that those posters' more successful books will be tagged by vengeful folks and their books will get pulled down.


More on the humorous book being pulled story?


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

RyanAndrewKinder said:


> More on the humorous book being pulled story?


Here's the thread: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,203509.0.html

I suspect that a few authors not a million miles away from here who didn't appreciate the joke did their bit to get the book pulled.

I hope I'm wrong on that score.


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## Graeme Reynolds (Jul 8, 2012)

I will admit to being a little alarmed at the amount of publicity this is getting - and yes I am painfully aware that my blog is in need of a fresh coat of paint. It's one of those jobs that I needed to get around to quite some time ago and never quite managed - but then, usually it doesn't get a lot of traffic.

Actually, the hyphens are the plain old minus sign for the most part, rather than an endash or emdash. Technically, I suppose I should have gone through each of them and used the &#45; ascii character but as it's not on the keyboard I am prepared to bet that most people do exactly the same thing.

And from the editing perspective, I used the best editor I could afford - a gentleman called Simon Marshall-Jones who also runs an award-winning small press called Spectral Press. I have no problem with the work that he's done.

Honestly, I gave some serious consideration to taking the post down, but despite the nit-picking, I think it makes a valid point about the way that Amazon have handled, and are continuing to handle the situation. There was no warning, no advisory and no communication. One person complained, the book came down and I have spent three days trying to get it put back with limited success.


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## Graeme Reynolds (Jul 8, 2012)

Amazon basically stated that a customer had complained about they hyphenation and their automated spell checker had identified over 100 instances of hyphen usage in the book which "significantly impacted the reader experience". When I queried this they simply said to remove them all and made no distinction. There will not be any issues with MS Word automatically creating them as previously mentioned as the ebook was built in html by hand rather than using an autoconversion utility.

I am not saying that the book is free from errors - no book ever is. I paid a professional editor and a professional proofreader to do two passes each, and that was after extensive use of beta readers and my own editing, including a read through with a text to speech application. It's as good as I could make it and I am comfortable with the quality. It's better than 99% of books out there in terms of editing and formatting. It's easy enough to pick fault with anything, but that detracts from the point somewhat


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Dear Amazon,

Please put down the Pepsi can with the suspiciously gold tint around the mouth. We're all concerned about this new habit of yours. Huffing paint is not the answer, son.


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## Lummox JR (Jul 1, 2012)

David S. said:


> Your British is showing. This is probably one of those cases where the Brits hyphenate and Americans don't. Actually, most Americans probably use noone, but that's another discussion.


Brits usually use the hyphenated form and Americans usually do not. I find it jarring to see the hyphen.

But "noone" is a straight-up misspelling. It is not and never has been one word.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

Lummox JR said:


> Brits usually use the hyphenated form and Americans usually do not. I find it jarring to see the hyphen.
> 
> But "noone" is a straight-up misspelling. It is not and never has been one word.


The villian of my next book shall be named Noone. He will stand accused of committing crimes against literature.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> This is from the comment section.
> 
> Are you sure the complaint was about compound-modifier hyphens (like that one) and not about code for word-break hyphens at the ends of lines having been inadvertently left in the text that was converted to Kindle format? Because that does cause hyph-ens to appear at rand-om in the middle of lines and it is in-deed quite annoy-ing to read.
> But if that's not it, then, yes, Amazon are being ineffably stupid.
> ...


How I read this comment. 
I have been doing this most of my life. I know exactly what I am doing. I never make a mistake. So it has to be their fault. See I didn't bother to learn how to code e-books because ALL coding is the same.

Now, I also figure it was more than just the hyphens. Also complaining on his blog, drives more traffic there and gives him more attention.


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## Lummox JR (Jul 1, 2012)

Carol Davis said:


> Could they be talking about the automatic hyphenation option that you can select in Word? If he's got that turned on, the offensive hyphens might not show up on his computer screen, but on someone's Kindle the book might be loaded with them.
> 
> I'm talking about the option that automatically breaks words with a hyphen at the end of a line, so that the right-hand justification doesn't insert long runs of white space. I've seen that in ebooks now and then, and it _is_ a little annoying.


But automatic hyphenation is a Word setting, not (to my knowledge) one that's used in e-books. It has an equivalent in CSS, but considering how little CSS is supported by epub and mobi formats, I strongly doubt a converted .azw file on Amazon is doing this. However, in formatting I'd be sure to remove a "hyphens" style attribute, just to be safe. Automatic hyphenation has never been done very well, I find it irritating that you can't override its settings for certain words in a document. And soft hyphens are poorly supported at all.


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## I&#039;m a Little Teapot (Apr 10, 2014)

MyraScott said:


> The villian of my next book shall be named Noone. He will stand accused of committing crimes against literature.


Noone Alright Irregardless. That's a perfect name for a villain.


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## lilywhite (Sep 25, 2010)

.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

SevenDays said:


> Noone Alright Irregardless. That's a perfect name for a villain.


So is this like Magneto from the first three X-men movies where it turns out he was right all along?


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

vlmain said:


> A lot of American use allright, too. Can we add that to the list of words to discuss? Or maybe not. I'm not in the mood to give myself a heart attack today.


Alright is now coming into fashion, but I've never seen allright. I think it should still be all right


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Noone knows the trouble I've seen.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

carinasanfey said:


> Alright is all wrong. Every time I see it written a part of me dies.


Agreed.

We also hear a lot of 'aswell' spoken as one word, with the emphasis on as. Mostly young people. Been going on for years, but still drives me nuts . Can't remember seeing it in print, though.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

carinasanfey said:


> Alright is all wrong. Every time I see it written a part of me dies.


Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright
Alright

Probably the first ever online, word-based murder attempt...


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

carinasanfey said:


> NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> May I rest in peace.


Yes, alright.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

carinasanfey said:


> I'm already dead, you can't hurt me.


Noone can hurt you now.


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## I&#039;m a Little Teapot (Apr 10, 2014)

Colin said:


> Yes, alright.


Two attempted murders in one. You just made me choke on my coffee.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

carinasanfey said:


> Noone can always hurt me.


A good title for a novel!


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## Guest (Dec 15, 2014)

I would report "The Color Purple"
Awful grammar


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Okey Dokey said:


> I would report "The Color Purple"
> Awful grammar


Dear Reader,
I am sorry that you found the book unreadable. Alas the grammar is correct for the specific English dialect it is written in. For more examples might I recommend Uncle Remus. I do hope you read these books and enjoy learning a new dialect.
Love, 
Your favorite English tutor.


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## Mystery Maven (Sep 17, 2014)

According to _Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition_, _Alright_ has been accepted since 1887.

But let's focus on the real point. According to the author, Amazon gave him no warning or notice; they just took his book down. This is wrong.


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## Graeme Reynolds (Jul 8, 2012)

Someone made a valid comment about the minus signs potentially not being correctly interpreted by the kindle text to speech app, so I've replaced all of those (and the single emdash) and uploaded the book again. It is unlikely to make any difference considering that I was instructed to remove all of the hyphenated words and they provided some helpful examples to show me how to do it, but at least I know that I have used the right character


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

carinasanfey said:


> *sigh* We young ones get blamed for everything.


When you get to my age everyone is young


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## Graeme Reynolds (Jul 8, 2012)

David S. said:


> What were the helpful examples they provided?


razor-filled, brown-furred, blood-soaked

All shocking examples of gratuitous hyphenation.


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## Guest (Dec 15, 2014)

I think this is more a reflection of outsourcing to people who can't make business decisions or apply sound logic. They only follow tightly controlled, cryptic scripts. Human robots. That's the problem.


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## lilywhite (Sep 25, 2010)

.


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## Guest (Dec 15, 2014)

Carina, that's the truth. If you've ever worked with IT developers you'll know EXACTLY what in talking about. One dimensional human robots when put into this capacity.

That's how the roles are designe to be. How most outsourcing is.


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## Graeme Reynolds (Jul 8, 2012)

and the book is back on sale again. Common sense seems to have prevailed


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Graeme Reynolds said:


> and the book is back on sale again. Common sense seems to have prevailed


More likely someone with proper responsibility has been reading about the kerfuffle.


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## Graeme Reynolds (Jul 8, 2012)

Well, the blog post just topped 110,000 hits so I think there is a good chance that they got wind of it and sorted it out


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Hey Graeme,
Glad it was just a legitimate error on their part and they fixed it.


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## Graeme Reynolds (Jul 8, 2012)

Thanks, Cinisajoy. Some of the comments I've had about errors in the book have worried me, though. I've already arranged for another editor to give it a pass in the new year. Even though the book has been out for 18 months, I want to make sure it is as good as it can be. I was still learning the ropes in many respects with the two High Moor books so maybe it's time I revisited them and gave them another little polish to be on the safe side.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

How did those hyphenation look like before it got fixed on a kindle? Did it mess with the flow somehow on the kindle?

I got a sample now, but stuff was fixed I guess. But I did come across the blood-soaked and the way its displayed on my kindle is a bit jarring.

This is how that line looks on my kindle.



> the white gleam of bone through her blood-soa-
> ked fur.


Maybe before there were more of those double hyphen thingies before? Or the flow was off? It all depends on what size I use to read. This is the word amount I get in on my 6 inch Fire. I haven't tried the paperwhite to see what shows up there.

Glad you got it up again, but sometimes we readers to have a point when we send a report to Amazon. On many devices I can do that right from the device. I think I can do it on my paperwhite, I didn't see that option on my Fire though.

eta: I have to note also that I have read on a kindle since 2008 and I can't recall kindle books having hyphenation on at all. I am not just imagining this? I actually had to down grade the app on Scribd because they introduced hypenation and it looks horrible to me. So seeing that hyphenation in your hypenated word is not something I am used to on the kindle. Someone tell me please I am not just imagining the no hyphenation on the kindle.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

Atunah said:


> I actually had to down grade the app on Scribd because they introduced hypenation and it looks horrible to me. So seeing that hyphenation in your hypenated word is not something I am used to on the kindle. Someone tell me please I am not just imagining the no hyphenation on the kindle.


Slightly off-topic but my non-fiction book with full urls in the references looked awful on Scribd so I had to change to bit.ly, which I was originally only going to use in the paperback. These urls are mostly to online newspapers so there are very long indeed and Scribd could not cope. No doubt people complained as Scribd has a lot of non-fiction readers.


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## MajesticMonkey (Sep 3, 2013)

@ Graeme Reynolds

Apologies for an earlier comment I made apparently I didn't have a clue about the real problem and so made an unhelpful comment. Glad your book is back for sale!!


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

My apologies too for a previous comment.


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## Kirkee (Apr 2, 2014)

Graeme, 

Sorry I couldn't post earlier. Wanted to just to offer support. Am glad it got fixed. 
But really, I thought: Can this be for real? Now the retailers are telling us HOW to write? WTF?
We don't live in North Korea or Cuba or Russia or China––where this is the norm. They don't like
something you've written? You're tossed in the can for any number of years, etc.

But you know what? Once again, this is another reminder that we're at the vendors' mercy.
What's the alternative? Right now am not sure. I do know it's not a good idea to go exclusive––with anyone.

We're basically walking on eggshells, my fellow indie writers. It's a good idea never to forget it. A writer's
book was pulled because one individual complained that the novel contained "too many hyphens." Unbelievable.
Absolutely mind-boggling.


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## Daizie (Mar 27, 2013)

Graeme Reynolds said:


> Well, the blog post just topped 110,000 hits so I think there is a good chance that they got wind of it and sorted it out


Wow. Awesome hit stats.


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## Graeme Reynolds (Jul 8, 2012)

It's unfortunate about the kindle doing auto-hyphenation. It's certainly not something that is in the book, so it must be something the device does automatically. I can see how that might be jarring.


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## Graeme Reynolds (Jul 8, 2012)

and no worries to those who made comments btw - nothing was taken personally. It's just internet stuff


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## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

David S. said:


> Your British is showing. This is probably one of those cases where the Brits hyphenate and Americans don't. Actually, most Americans probably use noone, but that's another discussion.


Oh, no. Noone is wrong regardless which side of the pond you're on ;-) It's no one in the US.

As for the issue with Amazon, I find it appalling. As for "taking out all the hyphens and reuploading," then you run the risk of people (rightfully) complaining about editing, so it's a no-win situation. Personally, I think Amazon needs to do better in regards to their quality control.


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## Lummox JR (Jul 1, 2012)

Graeme Reynolds said:


> It's unfortunate about the kindle doing auto-hyphenation. It's certainly not something that is in the book, so it must be something the device does automatically. I can see how that might be jarring.


I've never seen it do that with my Calibre-converted books on my first-gen Kindle Fire. I have to think there's something in the styles or the formatting that's initiating that. I'm surprised the Fire even supports such a setting, though.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Did anyone else get this ad at the top of the blog post?


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Cherise Kelley said:


> Did anyone else get this ad at the top of the blog post?


Yes. I did.


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## zoe tate (Dec 18, 2013)

vlmain said:


> the books were never taken out of the marketplace. I can't imagine the overuse of hyphens being more egregious than blatant keyword stuffing.


I agree with you, but the situations aren't really quite comparable in terms of "what has to be done to rectify them", I think? One relates to the product itself and the other only to its sales page.


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## Lummox JR (Jul 1, 2012)

Based on the report that lines in the book are still being automatically broken into hyphenated forms at the ends of lines, I suspect it isn't out of the woods yet. It's important to find out why that's happening, because the books I've converted have not ended up with hyphenation. This may be because in the original manuscript I don't have auto-hyphenation on either.

This post at KDP support suggests that the issue is in fact from Word (or whichever program is used for the manuscript) inserting soft hyphen ­ entities. I've never had any luck getting those to come over for me when I've inserted them intentionally into long words, but something is obviously causing breaks at the end of the line here.

For my part I wish all programs were a lot smarter about hyphens and line breaking in general. Ideally, any device would be reluctant to break on a soft hyphen as opposed to a more traditional spot, and would require some kind of egregious percentage of blank space on the first line from _not_ hyphenating there in order to consider it. Line breaking around em dashes is all kinds of wrong; Word breaks after even if the next character is a closing quotation mark, OpenOffice breaks before which is even dumber (but it respects Unicode chars that correct for it), and I believe my Fire does the same as OpenOffice. And if the program hyphenates or splits on a hyphen, it should not do the same on the next line. This logic is all fixable and it's really annoying that nobody's really standardized an algorithm for handling it.


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

Quality control notices are usually as a result of a customer complaint, with the information passed onto the author to rectify in an automated process. Hence they give the opportunity to either rectify, or to confirm say a spelling error is intentional. While they might not take a book off sale, I have seen Amazon notices on sales pages saying a quality notice has been issued, however, the book is still available to buy. This in itself will prevent sales until rectified 

As a rule, books are not taken off sale for a few reported typos or grammitcal errors as I say above but such a notice has the same effect. 

If a reader's complaint says that a book is unreadable because of say serious formatting, or in this case excessive  errors in the application of hyphens, then I would think it prudent to temporarily take a book off sale.

Considering the number of quality issues they probably receive from readers, then it is no wonder the process of reporting the issues to the author is automated. Where the auto process falls down is that before taking a book off sale, the serious complaint should be checked physically by Amazon. Maybe in view of the volume of reported cases this is not considered viable where locations are not included in the complaint. 

Clearly, once investigated by the author and challenged, then human intervention is applied to resolve a contested issue. 

As a side note, didn't Amazon introduce auto hyphens with their changes to the justification on devices?
------
Noone, no-one = nobody.


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## notjohn (Sep 9, 2016)

People are likely to be confused and indeed misinformed when a zombie thread is brought back to life. 2015 is the Dark Ages as internet time is measured.


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## ImaWriter (Aug 12, 2015)

Reviving zombie threads is bad enough. Doing it to spam the forum?


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

notjohn said:


> People are likely to be confused and indeed misinformed when a zombie thread is brought back to life. 2015 is the Dark Ages as internet time is measured.


Its resurrection sucked me in.


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