The letter 'f' violates right margin

[YZZYX]

I've written a 600 page book in FM and it's ready for KDP. KDP requires a minimum 0.25" margin and that's where the text frame is set. Everything comes out fine except for any line that ends with an 'f', and the terminal of the 'f' hangs outside the frame. I suspect it's outside by only a few dots but amount doesn't matter, it generates close to 100 errors in the KDP review and won't let me proceed until I fix it.

One way to fix it is move the right edge of the text frame in slightly but that requires reformatting the whole book and I'd rather shoot myself in the head. Does anyone have an easier solution?

[Bob_Niland]

What's the font?
I'm also seeing a peculiar spacing between "v" and "o" in "voltage".

So I'm wondering if using a different serif font, of similar typeface, might have more predictable font metrics.

[YZZYX]

Times New Roman. I think the spacing is an artifact of the screen rendering, it changes depending on the zoom level and the print results are fine.

[Bob_Niland]

re: Times New Roman

What foundry, vintage & font file format?

If it's old, such as a pre-Unicode TTF, try a newer instance.
If it's the latest OTF, perhaps try some other instances of Times or Times Roman. This may or may not be your fix, but would be helpful in isolating the problem to FM vs. the font. Of course, switching to any other font is apt to cause re-flow, and may just move the problem spots around.
…and it might be a bug in the KDP proofer, but I would have thought that codebase had seen a lot of TNR by now.

[YZZYX]

It's whatever comes with Windows 10. Earlier I tried a number of other serif fonts that are similar to Times Roman and with every one of them I can visually see that the terminal of the f hangs into the text frame. It seems like an issue with FM since I can visually see it happening in FM, and only with the f.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

What version of FM? I don't think I saw you mention that - have you tried Print to PDF instead of Save As or Publish?

[Bob_Niland · Accepted solution]

re: …I tried a number of other serif fonts that are similar to Times Roman and with every one of them I can visually see that the terminal of the f hangs into the text frame.

That would eliminate TNR as the source of the problem. The other questions arising about FM version, publish workflow and KDP workflow are leads to look into.

As a hack, if the problem is limited to a small number of Paragraph styles, such as Body, you might try setting a very small value in
Paragraph Designer /Basic\ Indent Right: [0.001"]
and see if that works around it. Some reflow might be expected.

[YZZYX]

you might try setting a very small value in Paragraph Designer /Basic\ Indent Right: [0.001"]

LMAO, that's the easy solution I was looking for! I never use this parameter and didn't think about it, yet it's exactly what i was looking for. Thanks!

[Bob_Niland]

If any of the suggestions work, be sure to tag them as Correct Answer.

[QuintinSeegers_Personal]

I also use FM to format my novels for KDP.  I save the book as PDF from FM, then upload the PDF in KDP. I've not had any issues. How do you 'get' the book from FM into KDP?

[YZZYX]

I also save as PDF.

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

There are those (including myself) that feel justified text decrease readability of text.

See https://chatgpt.com/c/673258a1-ebb8-8000-a00b-5b1b1827454f

If you remove justification, does the file process properly?

[YZZYX]

It turned out that a trailing 'f' was not the only problem, a leading 'j' did the same thing. So to fix it, I added 0.01" to the right and left indentations.

[Bob_Niland]

To Matt's suggestion, is justification playing any role in the phenomenon?
Knowing that might help Adobe fix it, if there's a bug report open on it yet.

[frameexpert]

This is necessarily a bug. When typefaces are designed, some letters are allow to hang over their side bearings so they fit better with the preceding or following characters. This is likely what you are seeing.

[Bob_Niland]

So it sounds like it might happen with any characters that can kern.

[frameexpert]

Even with kerning off, some characters are designed to to extend beyond their side bearings. Here is a screenshot with the f selected and you can see how the top right hangs over the side bearing.

Here is a screenshot of the lower-case j extending beyond its left side bearing:

[frameexpert]

In both examples above, the adjacent side bearings butt up together. With Pair Kern on, the side bearings of two characters may actually overlap.