Epub fonts + Alignment + hyphenation issues (Urgent SOS)

[Monira TJ]

Hi there,

I'm working on my first epub which I converted to .azw3 to be published as a Kindle e-book; the book is mostly text with a few tables and images. Things were going good until I tried to test the book on my kindle device. So here are the issues I'm facing:

1.Fonts: I noticed when I try to change the font from Kindle fonts menu (Aa) it displays only 2 fonts options in Arabic (screenshot attached) and not the usual fonts menu that comes with kindle like (Bookerly, Futura, Helvetica..etc). I double-checked the language in my InDesign file and made sure it's all set in English: USA and the digits are Arabic (0123) but it still doesn't solve the problem. Other ebooks in my kindle device display the fonts menu just fine. I'm using OpenType fonts in my book (New Times+Arial) to avoid any errors with embedding fonts. I downloaded Kindle previewer software and the book displays the book perfectly so I'm not sure if I should trust it or not. I don't want to send my client a book that doesn't give readers the best reading experience with the ability to choose the font they prefer.

2. Alignment: I'm using Left Justify for the body text, it works fine for most of the book but at some other parts the big white gaps between words are horrible! (attached) what is the best way to achieve the nice (left justify) alignment we usually see in kindle ebooks? I tried left alignment and I didn't like it at all.

3. Hyphenation: What is the best hyphenation setting that you recommend for the Body text so it displays nicely in kindle? I noticed that some of the white gaps are created because a long word wouldn't hyphenate even though I turned hyphenation on in the paragraph style setting for my body text and set minimum 5 letters for the word to hyphenate.

Your help is much appreciated and thanks in advance!

[BobLevine]

Why are you using Arabic for anything?

[Monira TJ]

Hi Bob,

I m not using Arabic at all in the epub document. The only thought I have is maybe because my indesign version supports Arabic because it is a middle eastern version and so is my windows 10 but all the epub paragraph styles are set to English US, I dont know how exporting epub ends up adding Arabic, it is a very bizarre thing.. I literally checked that everything is set to English tens of times but no success.

[BobLevine]

There was a similar posting recently. The numbers were assigned Arabic language. You need to remove that which can be done with a find / change.

[Monira TJ]

I saw that postand did that already and it showed me that it did 1 change and i thought it would fix the issue but still. For the digits it has to be Arabic 0123 because ironically it is called arabic but it actually refers to english digits , the other 2 options are Farsi and hindi ٠١٢٣ which I should totally avoid. It is driving me crazy!

Any idea how to fix the big spacing in the alignment? Surprisngly everything shows perfectly on kindle previewer with hyphenation and no big white gaps but somehow show issues on my kindle device only. I use Calibre to convert from epub to azw so i can check it in my kindle device while with kindle previewer I m using epub file

[BobLevine]

If the EPUB is fine than it’s the conversion that’s troublesome and you’ll need to check with Amazon.

[Derek Cross]

it might be worth checking out Flightdeck, it's a terrific validator (you can buy it by the month):

FlightDeck