diff --git a/www/contribute/producing-an-ebook-step-by-step.php b/www/contribute/producing-an-ebook-step-by-step.php index 4b553b2b..36040d73 100644 --- a/www/contribute/producing-an-ebook-step-by-step.php +++ b/www/contribute/producing-an-ebook-step-by-step.php @@ -267,15 +267,20 @@ proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll
Many older works use outdated spelling and hyphenation that would distract a modern reader. (For example, “to-night” instead of “tonight”). se modernize-spelling
automatically removes hyphens from words that used to be compounded, but aren’t anymore in modern English spelling.
Do run this tool on prose. Don’t run this tool on poetry.
se modernize-spelling .
+ Do run this tool on prose. Don’t run this tool on poetry.
+se modernize-spelling .
After you run the tool, you must check what the tool did to confirm that each removed hyphen is correct. Sometimes the tool will remove a hyphen that needs to be included for clarity, or one that changes the meaning of the word, or it may result in a word that just doesn’t seem right. Re-introducing a hyphen is OK in these cases.
Here’s a real-world example of where se modernize-spelling
made the wrong choice: In The Picture of Dorian Gray chapter 11, Oscar Wilde writes:
He possessed a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask…
se modernize-spelling
would replace the dash in gold-thread
so that it reads goldthread
. Well goldthread
is an actual word, which is why it’s in our dictionary, and why the script makes a replacement—but it’s the name of a type of flower, not a golden fabric thread! In this case, se modernize-spelling
made an incorrect replacement, and we have to change it back.
git
provides a handy way for us to visualize these differences:
git difftool
- After you’ve reviewed the changes that the tool made, do another commit. This commit is important, because it gives purists an avenue to revert modernizing changes to the original text.
+git
usually compares changes line-by-line, but since lines an ebook can be very long, a line-level comparison can make spotting small changes difficult. Intead of just doing git diff
, try the following command to highlight changes at the character level:
git diff -U0 --word-diff-regex=.
+ You can also enable color in your git
output to make the output of that command more readable, and even assign it to a shortcut in your git
configuration.
Alternatively, you can use an external diff GUI to review changes:
+git difftool
+ After you’ve reviewed the changes that the tool made, create an “[Editorial]” commit. This commit is important, because it gives purists an avenue to revert modernizing changes to the original text.
Note how we preface this commit with “[Editorial]”. Any change you make to the source text that can be considered a modernization or editorial change should be prefaced like this, so that the git
history can be easily searched by people looking to revert changes.
git commit -am "[Editorial] Modernize hyphenation and spelling"