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Production Q & A
Post here your questions (at the top of the page) and we shall invent answers! :)
Thank you for all your outstanding questions so far, and please keep posting them here.
Q: I am working on "Arrows in a Quiver". I am a bit confused about how to section out these headings:
I know that part of it has to be done in caption formatting (under the image). How do I section out the part before (Map 4, Historical Treaties, Source)?
Q: I'm working on Purchasing Power and the notes section has a brief preface with common abbreviations. I've added the notes according to the workflow and I'm wondering what to do with the remaining abbreviation information. Can I add a heading for "Abbreviations"? Thanks for your help!
Q: I am currently working on "L’accoucheuse de Scots Bay" and I am transcribing a news article that has been split into two images. I am wondering if I should transcribe the whole article (both images) into one complex image description and use the alt-text of the second image to refer the user to the complex image description of the first image. Or, should a complex image description be created for each image?
* Edit Here are the two images
A: I would need to see the image to give you an answer. Please share the image.
Q: Another question for "Until We Are Free," in the article "7 Organizing Direct Action in the Digital Age" there is a star symbol next to the first occurrence of the term "direct action" and an asterisk in-front of the heading of the next sub-section title 'what is direct action?'. It seems the star is being used to inform readers that this term will be explained later in the text and not as an endnote. As it does not seem that the star is not being used as an endnote reference should it be removed or should the star be replaced using the unicode symbol?
A: You can include an asterisk for both using your keyboard: * No need to use unicode for that symbol
Q: Another question for "Until We Are Free," in the article "6 Unbordable Blackness…" there is an endnote (#38) that does not contain any information. Should I remove the in-text reference to this endnote as I imagine that it could be confusing for the reader if they try to follow the endnote.
A: Yes, you can remove that reference. It was a mistake that slipped through editing.
Q: I am currently working on "Until We Are Free" and the introduction section of "2 Many a Thousand Gone" looks similar to a single level ordered list, in that many of the paragraphs are preceded by numbers, but some of the numbered items contain multiple paragraphs (e.g. item 6). My problem is that if I format this section as a single-level list each paragraph is assigned with a number, changing the original numbering scheme. I am wondering what is the best practice to maintain the original numbering scheme while also making the document accessible? Should only the numbered paragraphs be formatted as a list with the following paragraphs in normal style, or maybe as a multi-level list with following paragraphs on a lower-level?
A: This looks like an artistic choice, and not a navigational choice by the author and editor. This means it is not a formal list. Format it as normal paragraphs. I uploaded a sample of the section below.
sample_chptr2_intro_formatting.docx
Q: I am currently working on "L’accoucheuse de Scots Bay" and the list of works in the "Also by" section does use bullets. Is it okay to format this list with bullets to increase accessibility or would making that change break the copyright?
A: Using bullets in an unordered list is preferred, you are not breaking copyright if you are changing formatting to make it more accessible. That is the one thing that is allowed! Good question!
Q: I am working on "Until We Are Free" and one of the person's mentioned in the book stylizes their name as "iZrEAL Jones." I understand that this formatting will created problems for screen readers and that the name should be converted to standard capitalization for proper nouns. I am wondering though if there are any special considerations for proper nouns that I should be aware of?
A:You can follow the wiki guidelines for capitalization. The screenreader wont be able to read this name otherwise.
Q: I am working on metadata and it was all going really well until I came to the nnels genre taxonomy page. It instructs to download the excel sheet, however when I click on this item, I am directed to a page called "Forbidden". Is the link broken, or do I need more permissions or is this another glitch? Would it be possible to get the excel sheet emailed to me if it is a glitch? - Emiliya
A: It seems like a glitch. I emailed you the spreadsheet.
Q: I'm working on Kamloopa and there are a couple of images for which alt-text has already been completed (by the publisher I'm assuming?). Can I alter their alt text to better fit our standards, or should I leave as is? I wasn't sure if this would be considered "editing" as opposed to reformatting since they've provided the alt-text.
A: Many of these images are images of text in Fixed Layout format (i.e. the entire page is rendered as a single image.) These are inaccessible, and require you to transcribe them with accessible formatting as per our documentation. If there are any images within these pages you need separated, let me know and I will get them for you.The other Alt-text is fine as it is from the publisher.
Q: In L’accoucheuse by Scots Baythere, there is a quote before the back cover, I wasn't sure what the section title for this should be so I have tentatively title it Post Script Quote and used deeply to translate it to "Citation post-scriptum." Is there a standard heading for this section?
A: This is an Epigraph. Though they are usually found at the beginning of a book, they can be found at the end. If a section just has a quote, and it is clearly not a book review section, then mark it as an Epigraph.
Q: I am doing metadata cleanup for the first time. I followed the wiki directions of going onto nnels.ca –> log in –> and then, when I search for "Shortcuts", I don't see it on the website. I did CTR + F "Shortcuts" and came up with 0 results. What am I doing wrong? :( Here is my screen:
UPDATE/(ANSWER): So the line that shows the shortcut has now magically appeared! So I have found it.
I think it's safe to say that the question has been answered :) The CTRL + F function now shows 1/1 results for "Shortcuts" as well.
A:I received your question, and your additional email. Remember, all Q&A questions also go into my inbox, so you don't have to email me. The website was down last night for maintenance, and they are still working on some updates that will impact some features. As soon as this is cleared I will contact the team.
Q: I am currently working on "L'accoucheuse de Scots Bay" and there are a couple of images that seem to be news articles, see start of chapter 10, what is the best practice for handling pictures that only contain text? Is it more important to keep the image and provide the transcription in a complex image description or to transcribe the image directly into the body of the work?
A: Great question.
Context is always key when you are working with images, as the context will help you judge how much to describe, and what to describe. If the content of these newspaper clippings (articles ads etc.) are essential to the story, then they will need to be transcribed in a complex image description. Only if the it is an image of a word or phase do we transcribe and remove the image, images of newspaper clippings and ads are treated as images with text. Remember, if it is an ad then you need to also describe any images in the adds. You can use the complex description workflow. As stated on the Complex Image Description wiki page: "We can also create longer, complex descriptions when we need to transcribe an image, such as an image of a letter." Since these are french titles, please do not describe them in using DeepL, describe them in English and we will have our in house translator change them to French. If you are comfortable with transcribing the French, you may, but be very careful.
Q: Another question regarding "Dream First, Details Later". When I'm working in Sigil, I know I leave the alt-text for decorative images blank, but do I also leave the alt-text for decorative image section breaks blank, or should I write "break" for my alt-text? For example in this text there are three blue dots to mark section breaks. Thanks for your help!
A: A section break is a decorative image, so you leave the alt-text blank.
Q: I'm having some trouble with this image in the prologue of "Dream First Details later. I was doing some searching on alt-text for flow charts and this link (https://accessibility.psu.edu/images/flowcharts/) had a suggested method which is based on a nested list (although my image has 7 layers compared to the three layers in the example, so I'm not sure if my list would get to dense this way?). How should I proceed?
A: A nested list is the correct way to logically describe this image, some flowcharts are more complex than others so it is okay if you it has more than 3 levels. Judging from this image it looks like the longest Yes Train is 5 levels, and then is gets shorter after that. Start with the first question, follow the 5 yes's, then follow the one no in a nested list, then go to the next question and repeat.
e.g. Title: "How to Embark …"
A guide by….
Yellow Arrow Label Reads: "Start Here" at the first question. Each Question can lead to different outcomes as described below:
First question: "?"
- If "yes" then Q:
- If "yes then Q:
- If "yes then Q:
- If "yes then Q:
- If "yes then Q:
- If "no" then:
Second Question: "?"
Q: I am currently working on "Americandreams.ca" which is a French language play. I understand that for play you are to apply strong style to characters name and place the lines and stage directions in normal style. One of the characters speaks English though, so there are whole sections of the play and a large number of lines in the play that are written in english that may be jarring from the constant back and forth. I am wondering if I still apply strong style and language markups to each of these sections and lines?
A: Always mark up languages with Strong Style. This is done so I can locate the markup easily and check it. I then remove the strong style for language before conversion. This is noted in the wiki section for languages in the note at the end of the documentation for how to mark up languages. I have revised this note to be more clear. If there are large sections of English then they have to be marked up, as per the language rules. It is with single words and small phrases where we have to be more cautious, as this can be jarring. In a multi-lingual play, it is not surprising to have different languages, and it is more cumbersome to the listener to hear entire phrases mispronounced.
Q: I was wondering if you could make me a video showing how to add Language mark-ups? I noticed that there is one section of the My Heart is Not Blind book that says a word in Hawaiian, and another that uses the word “nonna”. I looked on the wiki and found these instructions:
Marking up Languages To mark up secondary language:
Select the text Go to Tools > Language This will open a pop up menu Select the appropriate language Apply Strong style to the word or phrase
When passing the ticket to the Production Coordinator, please make note of what languages you used.
So I tried this, however I don’t think I am doing it right. It’s telling me to download the Italian package for Word, for example, when I select the appropriate language. I think I may be in the wrong section…?
A: It sounds like you need to download the language package to your Word in order to use that language tag. Windows makes you take a few extra steps to add languages you haven't used before. I found this website that breaks down how to apply, add, and use editing languages in Windows. Here is the link: https://www.customguide.com/word/how-to-change-language-on-word Note: The video at the top automatically stops to give you time to do the task, just hit play again to have it start up again.
Remember, we do not markup single words that are naturalized into English. Nonna is a word that is also pronounced the same in English, so no markup. The Hawaiian should be marked up, but there is no mark up for Hawaiian in Word …. which is just …so wrong… Mark the word as strong so I can find it and see if I can add a tag in the code. This will not be read by screenreaders though, so you can also add a producer's not stating that the book has words in Hawaiian that will not be pronounced correctly by assistive technology.
Q: I'm not sure how to write Alt Text for this. This example happens twice within the book. The top part "BEFORE" goes along with the text "I packed a bunch of photos in my dad’s suitcase, so he wouldn’t forget us by the weekend" and so on and so forth.
A: This one is very tricky. I looked throughout the text and this seems to be a pattern. Could you pass me back this title and I will share it with our testers to see what we could potentially do to make these images. Sometimes FXL layout is not convertible to reflowable text, I will keep you posted on this.
Q: I have a follow up question about the use of page numbers in “The Country will Bring Us No Peace”. The e-book is reflowable in Apple Books, Calibre, and Thorium so I can’t tell what the original page numbers are. I’m not sure how to approach this. Should I still use page numbers?
A: We do not retain page numbers, unless specifically requested. You do not need to add any page numbers, and if the book has running headers (page numbers and text in header or footer area of page) you will need to remove them. You can find directions on how to remove running headers in the Regex section of the wiki.
Q: I am currently working on the poetry book "Render" and one of the poems, "Following the Leader", was created to look like a list with sequential numbering on each line. Should I format the poem as a list (to avoid confusion from the sequential numbering) or leave the poem as it is because some of the sentences are spread across multiple lines?
A: Recreate it with the same numbers as it is in the original. The poet meant for the lines to break up like that, as this is a common technique in poetry to convey meaning an emotion.
Q:Also in "Render," there is a poem (There's Nothing There)that is created to look like a table and was formatted as table during the conversion process. Should I leave this poem in the table format?
A: This is not a table, it is three columns. Tables are used for tabular data, in this case it was used to create the layout for the columns. This is not accessible, and is also poor publishing practice. To create columns see Columns section.
Q: I am currently working on "Render" and it seems that a large number of bookmarks were created in the conversion process. Should I delete these bookmarks and only leave the ones that I have created for hyperlinks?
A: You don't have to worry about those extra bookmarks, they don't make it through conversion. It is only the ones you create hyperlinks for that make it through.
Q: For children's books, they don't normally have chapters, so we have to "divide each page into page numbers that match the original pages". For my book, Weekend Dad, when I look at the e-reader, the original pages don't have page numbers. How do I create headings with page numbers that match original pages, if the original pages do not have page numbers? Sorry if this question is weird and confusing.
A: Good Question! You can assign the first page of the story as Page One (heading 1) if there are no page numbers.
Q: There is a table in "The Canadian Prairies" that I am struggling with. The table is extensive and is split into two pages, and the header column is only visible on the first page - should I combine them into a single table?
A:You can combine it into the same table. If you follow the instructions on header rows in the wiki it will be fine: https://bclc.wiki.libraries.coop/doku.php?id=public:nnels:etext:tables#table_headers
Q: I'm working on "This Country Will Bring Us No Peace" which is another title with no chapters, only section breaks. Is this a case in which I need to use page numbers? This seems similar to the case of "No Way Out" which was a previous Q&A question - but I wanted to double check.
A: You are correct!
Q: In Cosmic Queries, the index includes a note that page number in bold refer to images. Should I apply strong formatting to the relevant page numbers or leave without formatting. I figure that the formatting here does provide additional meaning (that the references are to images), however, I wasn't sure if this was relevant in the case of an index.
A: In this case you can keep the bold. Don't forget to include the Producer's Note about Indexes!
Q: In Joy of Cooking, some sections include methods of cooking which are formatted as shown in this image:
With the beginning of the sentence describing the method bolded and italicized (To prepare a water bath; to test baked custards for doneness; to cook custards using an immersion circulator). Should these be formatted in any special way?
A: You can remove the styling from those phrases as they styling is just for visual purposes and adds not additional meaning to the text. When someone reads the text, they will understand what it is saying without the extra styles. We want to avoid using bold and emphasis where ever possible as it can create accessibility errors.
Q: I'm working on poetry book The East Side of it All, and there is complex formatting on some poems. From the poetry wiki page, I understand that I should maintain left justification and add a producers note explaining that we were not able to maintain these design elements. The example producers note says "For poems that originally appeared with more complex formatting there are in-text producer’s notes." I'm not clear on what an in-text producer's note looks like. Do I add the note after the poem title, or after the whole poem in question? Thanks!
A: We no longer do in-text production notes, they are an old practice from when we made DAISY books. That was an error that has been removed. You only need to put in the Producer's Note at the beginning of the book. You should mention in the Producer's Note that 'The Great Snake' originally appeared as a concrete poem in the shape of a snake, and follow the wiki guidelines for how to convert concrete poems.
Q: In the complete cooking for two cookbook, each chapter starts with an index of recipes and some of those recipes have a yellow or red square beside them indicating if the recipe is "fast" or "light". There is a legend at the bottom of the index. How should I handle this?
A: In the Alt-Text enter the word 'Fast' or 'Light' into the correct squares. I also noted there were instances where there were images of the actual words 'Fast' and 'Light'. For those instances replace with just the correct word and remove the image.
Q: I understand that when I am keeping page numbers (in the case of All the Rage) I should not start a new page with an image. There are a few instances in All the Rage where an image is placed at the beginning of the page. In these cases, should I place the image on the previous page? Or move some text from the previous page down so it is above the image?
A: There is no need to reorder the text, we want to keep it as close to the original as possible. It is okay to start a page with an image.
Q: And I actually have another question on this book (No Way Out). This is the first time I've seen a novel without any chapters at all. Even the beginning of the text, after the title page, dedication and publishing information, just starts with a blank page. So, I'm having a hard time deciding about headings. Should there be none at all? There are quite a few internal divisions marked by three asterisks that I'm replacing with horizontal lines, but nothing to indicate chapters of any kind. There are newspaper articles, emails, and dialogue transcripts interspersed throughout the story and I'm wondering whether I should format the first line of those as headings, both to distinguish them from surrounding text, and to add some sort of navigation tool?
A: In this case we can insert page numbers as based on the PDF. You can insert page numbers in the Header or Footer of the Word document and choose numbering as per the print book. Microsoft Word allows you to use upper/lower roman numerals like I, ii, iii or Arabic numbering 1,2,3.
Let me know if you have any more questions about this process.
Q: In No Way Out (a novel), there are a number of interview transcripts formatted the same way as plays (each new line of dialogue starts with the character's name followed by a colon). Am I good to apply Strong style to the characters' names the same way as I would in a play?
A: You are correct, you can format these sections as a play.
Q: In February’s Son, there are sections of text from the killer’s POV which are always on their own page, and styled with italics. Throughout the text I was planning on using context breaks to distinguish these sections, but there is one of these POV sections that comes after the epigraph but before the first top level heading that starts the body text of the novel (H1:10th February, 1973 H2: One). There is no section heading in the table of contents, but I wondered if I needed to add some kind of section heading to distinguish it from the epigraph section? Or should I leave as is?
A: Leave it as is. We are not editors, so we do not add this type of formatting to books.
Q:I have a question regarding endnotes in “The Love of Strangers”. Words or phrases throughout the text are hyperlinked to a notes section. Each entry in the notes section is organized with a page number, hyperlink and then the note. I’m wondering how to approach these. When insert them as endnotes, I was assuming I would leave the hyperlink. Should I also leave the page number that is listed?
A: You can remove the hyperlinks and page numbers and enter the notes in as listed endnotes in order. Place each not at the end of the original hyperlinked phrase. For example, you first number (1) would go after the phrase "Iranian students." with no hyperlink since the note number is the link. The publisher was trying to be cool with their formatting, but it is not accessible.
Q: One more math related question! In Fight Like a Physicist, some of the chapters have "Math Box" Text boxes in which the author does some specific math calculations. I've been treating these as asides (as per the wiki) and moving them to the end of a section, however I'm noticing that in some cases, normal text after the text box is referring directly to calculations within the text box, so rather than maintaining narrative flow by moving the box, it seems like I'm interrupting it (one example of this is in Chapter 3: A circular path can protect you from the full force of gravity). Should I leave the text boxes where they are? If so, how do I distinguish where the textbox ends and where normal text resumes? Thanks for your help!
A: Enter them into textboxes and markup heading without the phrase 'Aside'. (Insert > Text Box). This text box will translate to an <aside> tag when converted to EPUB3.
Q: In Joy of Cooking, I'm second and third guessing myself in how I'm handling the recipes. They are all structured the same way. They start with a serving size and a small paragraph about the recipe. And then they go into the steps and listing what ingredients are needed for each step.
Example:
And right now, this is how I am currently thinking I should handle them (but I keep flip-flopping):
How would you like me to format the recipes so I can ensure I am doing it consistently and can stop going back and forth with myself?
PS. This cookbook is amazing. I may play Recipe Roulette with it.
A: The way you have done it is correct!
Q: In Joy of Cooking, the authors make use of 3 symbols to indicate optional steps or tips/tricks. The triangle and arrows appear as images in the Word doc. How should I handle these?
Example in context:
A: Use Unicode to enter them in as symbols. Here are the wiki directions for how to treat symbols.
Q: I have a question about hyperlinks. In the book I'm working on (The Next Big Thing), there are quite a few links to websites and I've been checking each one, as per the wiki instructions. I came across one though where the link works, and it does take you to a working website but it's clearly not the one the author intended. The website link is nanotechproject.org but the site has nothing to do with nanotech, it's basically a huge ad for penis enlargement devices (so, very spammy). Should I leave the link alone since it works even if it isn't working as intended?
A: That is an uncomfortable find. In this case I would just remove the link, we don't want our patron to get spam on his computer.
Q: I have an additional question related to the previously mentioned math equations. The author sometimes refers to components of the equations in the text in which case he often uses the variable (a capital letter or symbol) and a descriptor of the variable in subscript. Can I apply direct formatting to achieve the subscript? Or should I leave as is (i.e. Rimpact)?
A: This is a visual design thing, so in this case just write out the word Rimpact.
Q: I have a question about how to approach the alt-text for images of math equations (regarding the title Fight Like a Physicist). Is there a tool/method for transcribing the equations for the alt-text? Some of the equations are relatively short, whereas others are more complex. Contextually, the equation images are part of the text, not independently described.Thank you for your help!
A: Good question. Use Insert / Equation and use Word’s Equation editor to build an expression, which will be stored in the document as OOML. To learn more about inserting equations check out the DAISY Advanced Guide and refer to the section on Math Equations.
Q: In 500 years of Indigenous resistance, at the beginning of the section "Extermination and Assimilation" there is an image of 5 maps that spans across two pages, so the map in the middle is divided in two. In the alt-text of the second map image I've stated that it is a continuation of the previous image" as the wiki instructs. My concern is, in the document, the first part of the map image is placed before the section heading, so the two parts of the image are in two different sections. Is this an issue?
A: Great Question! You can move the first map just below the heading so they are in the same section.
Q: Stay the Blazes Home makes frequent reference to COVID-19 with COVID being capitalized. I realize this is an acronym and so we would usually leave it capitalized, but I'm wondering if I can change it to lower case letters due to the frequency used (I don't want it to be jarring to the reader to have the letters read out each time) and because people often pronounce it "covid" in everyday speech? Thanks for your help!
A: You can leave it as COVID.
Q: I have a question about the tables in Gifted Education. In Chapter 1, there are two tables, labeled Figure 1 and Figure 2. The first table is quite complex with sub-sections and annotations so I thought it would be best do leave it as an image and do a complex image description. Do you think that's best? For the second table, Figure 2, it's not as complex but still more complex that a basic table. For this one, I'm unsure whether I should also do a complex image description or if I should delete the image and reproduce it broken up into several smaller tables?
Figure 1:
Figure 2:
A: Good questions. In cases like this it is important to ask what these are for. It seems like these are examples of forms, and not tabular data that needs to be read in detail by the reader. In this case I would suggest doing a complex description for the forms, and remember to call them forms and not tables. The tables in these forms are there as layout design and not as tabular data.
Q: The book A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki is converted from a digitized version of the book, which have made some things messy. There are notes in each chapter of the book, which are not linked in the EPUB version. I'm having difficulties locating many of these, perhaps due to the conversion process. How should I approach editing the notes in this book?
Should I edit incorrectly converted words, such as in this sentence:
"… when they are wiUiong to sell" even though this is how they appear in the EPUB version?
A: This is a very low quality digitization of the print version, with way too many errors. Please see my email for more information. I took this book out of production.
Q: One more question regarding There be Pirates. This is juvenile non-fiction book that utilizes a glossary to define unfamiliar vocabulary. Through out the text, these vocabulary words are highlighted in bold to indicate they can be found in the glossary. Would it be best to leave these words without formatting, or use emphasis?
A: You can leave it as bold style.
Q:A questions regarding headings in There be Pirates. I understand from the Wiki that I need to nest headings without skipping (Styles and Headings). I'm currently using Chapter Headings [Heading 1], Section Headings [Heading 2] and Asides [Heading 3]. These nest appropriately in all sections except for the beginning of the introduction in which asides that appear before any section headings, so I go from Introduction [Heading 1], to Heading 3 for these asides. I'm wondering the best way to proceed in this section… do I use heading 2 style for the asides in the introduction or leave as is?
A: You always follow the rule of hierarchy. This rule is based on creating accessible navigation and less on the visual order of the headings. Nest headings without skipping. For example, if you have a book with two levels of headings, use Heading 1 and Heading 2, not Heading 1 and Heading 3, no matter how small or insignificant the second level of heading might appear. It’s very important to not skip heading levels as the document will not validate as an accessible ebook. In this case, the asides in the first section are Heading 2. If you skip a heading the reader will become confused and lost as it reads as if there is a heading missing from the navigation.
This is listed in the general rules for headings on the Styles & Headings page in the wiki.
Q: In Butter Honey Pig Bread, there are a number of emails and letters utilized as part of the narrative. In the ebook, the letters are formatted with italics, however the emails do not have any distinct formatting.What is the best approach to reformatting these sections. Should I apply quote style or leave without formatting?
A: You can apply quote format to these sections.
Q: Question regarding the placement of the book summary section. I've included this section for the information on the front cover flap of "Thanks for the Business" but I am unsure of where this should be placed in the order or the book. Prior to the title page section, or after?
A: We do not keep any cover information. So anything from the cover can be removed.
Q: In "Thanks for the Business" there is a point where the author provides a series of quotes from the subject of the book to illustrate a particular point. The original book formats the quotes in a list with bullet points. Should I also format this as a list to keep it consistent with the e-book? Or would it be more appropriate to use the quote style? The quotes can be found on page 301-302 of the e-book.
A: Good question! In this case you can keep it as a list.
Q: In the book the Haunting of Room 909, the author frequently capitalizes whole words in dialogue to indicate the speaker is yelling or emphasizing something. I understand that leaving the words capitalized will mean that one letter is read at a time. Should I just make these words lower-case, or use emphasis style, or is there another way I can make them stand out?
A: Just remove the all-capital letters, we do not need to add anything to the text.
Q: In the book One Good Reason, there are two authors who take turns telling their stories. There is an image at the beginning of each chapter indicating which author is speaking: a guitar if it's Sean and a heart if it's Andrea. Since they're functional and not just decorative, should I keep the images and add alt-text? Or should I replace the image with [Sean] or [Andrea]?
A: Great Question! In this case, since they bring meaning to the text you should keep them and add simple Alt-Text. For example "An acoustic guitar representing Sean."
Q: Question regarding formatting quotes. In the Hanging of Angelique there are a number of block quotes taken from newspapers and journals. In the etext some of the quotes have the date formatted to be a part of the block quote, whereas others appear to have the date formatted in a way that appears it is intended to be outside of the block quote. Just to clarify, should I apply the quote style to all of the dates so they are consistent? Or apply the quote style only to the dates that appear to be a part of the block quote?
A: Great question. In this case, it is best to be consistent.
Q: Question regarding The Hanging of Angelique. THe text refers to Fala de Guine, a creole language that is a fusion of Portuguese and African languages. One paragraph of the text utilizes some specific terms from that language to describe Afro-Portuguese culture such as "mangana", "ye ye" and "zarambeque". I'm unsure of the proper language formatting for these terms… should I leave without language formatting or maybe utilize Portuguese?
A: So it sounds like these are being used as proper nouns, in that case they would not have language applied to them. See the language section for more information on when and when not to used languages.
A note about less common languages: If Word does not have a language in its options for applying languages then we can not apply it. Never apply a similar language as that would be incorrect.
It is good to always check the wiki Language page, and check with me about languages as they can be very tricky sometimes (for example we don't have span tags for most Indigenous languages at this time, but Inuktitut has a set of unicode for its symbolics-this is highlighted further in the language page.
We also have to be super careful in using language tags because they can cause an accessibility barrier if it is just a small phrase or single word. This can go against our intuition as sighted readers, but remember the screenreader will read that single word or short phrase in a completely different voice and then go back to the main voice when it is done. This is incredibly jarring and it not helpful at all. We should only be applying them to longer phrases or blocks of text.
If you find there are a lot of these words, or longer phrases let me know and we can put in a Producer's Note similar to the one we do for Indigenous languages.
Never hesitate to ask!
Q: Quick question about Faith that Works. There are some photos at the end that I'm wondering whether I should keep and add alt-text to or just delete. They are at the very end under the section "Ten Point Plan for Gospel Advancement" which isn't part of the main book. To me, it looks more like the advertising material publishers sometimes put at the back of books.
A: Good question! You can remove the images but keep the text and apply nested lists. This is a list of resources, so you can also create a heading 'Resources'
Q: This is a question about headings and navigation. I'm working on The Good Turn. The book is divided into parts with chapters within the parts, which is all very straightforward. But there are two places where I'm not sure what to do. The first is that there are sections called "Anna" that present a different character's point of view. They are also sometimes in a different timeline from the main narrative. I think they should be H1 level, like the Part headings but I'm not sure since they are more like chapters. I'm wondering whether I should actually put them as H2, even though one of them occurs before Part One begins. I'm not sure which is better for navigation. The other place I'm not sure about is the dates that are placed BEFORE the chapter or part headings. Usually the date/location comes after like on Page 9 and 83 but in some places like page 157 and page 211, a new date is placed between chapters. Is it okay to move the date just after the chapter heading instead of leaving it before? It seems like navigation would be improved if I did but I know we generally try to leave the text alone as much as possible so I wanted to check what you thought was best.
A: Great Question! You should never edit a book, but if you are unsure ask! We want to recreate the book as close to the original as possible. Remember, this is copyrighted material, so we can't actually edit anything or move things into a new order, we just have to do our best to make it as assessable as possible with reformatting.
I looked at this title, and you are so right, these headings confusing. A good rule of thumb is to remember we are working with a Hierarchical structure for headings. This means H1 is always followed by H2, which is always followed by H3, and so on. Here is a link to the wiki that explains this a bit more.
A good way to help figure this out is look at the original PDF (you should always be looking at the original ebook as you publish your books to make sure you are following the right formatting as needed)
For example, the first time you see
THE GOOD TURN Dublin, Ireland Tuesday 1 September 2015 ANNA
at the beginning of the etext, this is actually three pages. One is an additional title page, which you can delete in this instance, and the others are the section headings that are divided by pages. Sometimes publishers use blank pages for breaks.
So the first page has the heading
Dublin, Ireland Tuesday 1 September 2015
You want to mark this as one full heading as follows
Dublin, Ireland: Tuesday 1 September 2015 (heading one because it is the first section after the Title page and front matter, it is not a subsection so it gets heading one)
The next page has 'Anne' in smaller font and underlined. That can be set to Heading Two as it is a subsection of the previous heading followed by text.
Then you have this own page in the PDF
PART ONE Galway, Ireland Saturday 31 October 2015
This can be split into two headings levels following our rule for navigational hierarchy
Part One (H1)
Galway, Ireland: Saturday 31 October 2015 (H2)
All the chapters under this last H2 heading will be H3 (chapter 1-10)
Another trick to help you is to note the font and layout style in the original PDF.
All the Heading Ones and twos are on their own page, and the Heading threes are on a separate page (usually before the body text) a smaller font and underlined. These are visual clues on how to help you structure the headings. The first section is an exception because we have to follow the rule of hierarchy. We also know all Parts get top headings, so that will move down all following Location: Date headings to H2 and all Chapter and Anna headings to H3 as per the rule of hierarchy.
Then you go into the next part and start again.
It will look as follows:
- Dublin, Ireland: Tuesday 1 September 2015 (h1)
- Anna (H2)
- Part One (H1)
- Galway, Ireland: Saturday 31 October 2015(h2)
- Chapter 1 (H3)
- Chapter2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Dublin Ireland: Tuesday 1 September 2015 (H2)
- Anna (H3)
- Part 2 (H1)
- Galway, Ireland: Monday 2 November 2015 (H2)
- Chapter 11 (H3)
and so one until you get to the Epilogue and other back matter which are all H1.
Q: I have a question about The Pencil, an illustrated children's book. The images in the .doc file are a mixture of double wide (one single image for the left and right page) and just one page wide. Should the double wide images be split in two so we have one image per page like usual? Or should I make them small enough that they fit on a regular portrait-oriented letter-sized page? If they should be split in two, would I use the snipping tool to do that?
A: For any images that ever need edits of this nature, please send the Production Coordinator a message in the RT of the ticket to get the images for you. In this a case it should be okay. If we hit any issues during conversion I will let you know
Q: Hello, I'm working on Powwow Summer. The .doc file has been converted from a PDF file. I can't figure out how to get rid of the grey page colour in the .doc file. I've attached a screenshot to show you what it looks like.
It's not grey shading of the text, it's the page itself. It doesn't seem to be a graphic that I can delete, like it usually is. I tried making the paper letter sized (it was smaller with non existent margins on the left to start with so that's why I adjusted the paper size, because I wanted to make sure it was all left justified). When I did that, the grey background only took up the original paper size so now it has white margins on the right and bottom. But I still can't get rid of the remaining grey. When I google the problem, I just find instructions for removing grey background from text, not from the page itself. I also tried copying and pasting the text into a new document but the grey page background came with it. And I have cleared formatting several times. Any suggestions on how to get the page background all white?
A: This is an example where Word can be very tricky. So it is an image that exists on a separate pane, and is located in the header. There are also two levels of grey squares you will need to delete.
In order to delete
- Go to the Layout tab in the Ribbon Menu
- Select Selection Pane. This will open a new work area to the right of the document.
- Navigate to the page with the image you need to delete
- Open the header and footer by double clicking the top of the page (this is the location in the document where this second grey image is.)
- Select the image you wish to delete. In this case it is the Images that are labelled as Rectangle.
- This will select the image directly in the document
- click in the document and select Delete
Here is a video demonstrating how this works.
NOTE: When you are resizing the page layout please make sure you are doing it with direct formatting. First, select the entire document, then go the Layout tab in the Ribbon Menu and select 8x10 (do not select the borderless option.) We need to be careful and consistent if we are resizing a document to avoid any error.
Q: Follow up question regarding the song title tables in Four Boys and a Guitar: When I'm making a separate table for each song, I have been putting the song title in the spot labeled "Title" under Table Properties - Alt Text. However, when you look at the tables on the page, there is no visible indication of the song title for each table. I'm wondering if it would improve usability for sighted users to add a level H2 header in front of each table with the song title for that table?
A: Yes, adding the heading and the title in the alt-text priorities works.
Q: I have come to the appendixes at the end of this book and there is a very long and complex table in Appendix D (starts on page 195 of the PDF, titled Mills Brothers Discography–by song title) that I could use some direction on. It's going to take a lot of time and I just want to make sure I'm tackling it the best way before I start. The issue I'm having is the subheadings for each song title. Here's a screenshot of one way I thought of to deal with them. But I'm also wondering if it would be better to create a separate table for each song. What do you think?
A: In this case you should create separate tables for each song title.
Set the heading of the section as 'Mills Brothers Discography–By Song Title
Set each table tile as simply the song title.
Q: In Svaha, there are some Mandarin phrases that are spelled out phonetically with the English alphabet. I've been trying to mark them as Strong and to set the language as Chinese but Word won't let me. (I click "okay" after choosing Chinese as the language and the pop up box closes but then the language is still marked as English). Since they're spelled out phonetically, I'm wondering if they even need to be marked? And if they do, do you have any suggestions as to why Word won't let me?
An example of the type of phrase I'm talking about is: "Wo hen hsiang chien t'a."
Edited to add: Sure, I uploaded it to Cyberduck. I just want to add that I later came across a lot of similarly spelled out Japanese phrases and was also unable to mark them as Japanese.
A: It seems to be an issue with Word since the words are written with english characters. Apply bold style to them, and add a Producer's Note about the Chinese and Japanese phrases not having proper markup, so screen reader's will not pronounce them correctly.
Q: I am working on the plates for my book, The Statler Brothers. With our new workflow, do we need to modify the Caption style, or can we leave it as is?
A: Great question! You can leave it as is. The new conversion process is a lot smoother than the old one, so we can do less modifications to the doc file.
Q: I have a question about French dialogue for the book Société des grands fonds. For French dialogue, they often forego quotation marks and instead use em dashes at the beginning of each line of dialogue, which make it look more like a list. Here's an example from chapter 10 of this book:
— Un hot dog patate, ça fait longtemps que j’ai pas mangé ça…
— Pourquoi tu penses à ça ?
— Ben, t’es venu ben loin pour manger un hot dog.
Am I okay to leave it as is?
A: Yes. We only reformat, and this would be an edit. We aim to keep the reformatted book as close to the original as possible.
Q: I am starting Elric: Stormbringer! and this will be the first book I edit with the new workflow of not using the NNELS template add-on. I have cleared the formatting twice. My question is about the normal style. In my software, it is currently set as Times New Roman, size 11. Previously, all our documents were Arial, size 14, which seems more accessible to me for people with low vision. Assuming we aren't switching to Times New Roman 11, going forward, will I need to modify the normal style to be Arial 14 for each doc? I'm also wondering, is this default style something I can change in my Word program so that normal is always Arial 14 going forward?
A: Normal style as presented in your Word is fine. We no longer have to custom styles the way we used to. This will not be a problem with our new workflow for EPUB3. EPUB3's have the ability to change the font style and size within the reader, and 'easy to read fonts' can be different for different people. Though sans serif is generally better for low vision people.
Q: The book I am working on now, Elric: The Fortress of the Pearl by Michael Moorcock, has a map which has been split across two pages. However, in the PDF version, the map is incomplete; it appears in the scanning process, or however this book was digitized, it cut off what would be the middle of the map. How should I approach writing a description for the map?
A: We will have to make due with what we have, as there are no digital versions of this title. Just describe what you can.
Q: I have a question about how to handle an image in the book Leaving a Legacy. There is a rating scale from 1 to 5 in the text that is presented as an image. I'm considering a few different ways to handle this but I thought the following would be the simplest. Is this okay? (Or should I delete the image, insert the same image as a .jpg, and then enter alt-text for the image?) (Or, if I go with the option below, do I need to make my text replacement a Prod Note since it's my words and not the author'?)
A: This is answered on the Alt-Text page here.
Q: This question is about how we treat Indigenous languages. I have a book where there are just a few single words in an Indigenous language. They aren't phrases so I haven't marked them as per the new procedure. My question is, do I still include a Prod Note at the beginning identifying the language and explaining how they won't be pronounced correctly?
A: Yes. For Indigenous languages always include the producers note, and do your best to identify the language as precisely as you can.
Q: Another question today but this one is regarding the new instructions for sidebars and textboxes. Should I mark the end of the textbox content with three asterisks to indicate that the reader is back in the regular content of the book?
A: Great question! Just move the secondary content to the end of the section.
Q: Hi, I'm working on A Year on the Wild Side and its complex image descriptions. I have finished moving all of the image descriptions to the end under the heading "Complex Image Descriptions" and inserted the lines "Navigate back to image" and "Follow this link for an extended description at the end of the book". Now, I'm trying to insert bookmarks and links. However, when I highlight the line, "Follow this link for an extended description at the end of the book" and right click on it, I seem to get a different menu than you. Here's a screenshot of what I see:
I've searched the top menus for a way to "Insert Highlight" and can't find one. The only highlight tools are colour changing highlights.
A: So you are not inserting a highlight, you are inserting a hyperlink. I fixed the Documentation to state Hyperlink, sorry about that confusion. In the screenshot you shared you will want to choose the 'Link' option and insert an hyperlink within the document to the sub-heading for the description you are linking to. You should have all your sub-headings in place in the Complex Image Descriptions section all set to Heading Level 2.
Q: Edit: I've tried with Adobe Digital Editions and Calibre. I just tried with Thorium, but I get an Import Failed message when I try to open the book…
The Notes that are not linked for me are:
Chapter 7, note 3, 18, 19
Chapter 10, note 6
Q: How should I handle endnotes that are not properly linked in the original text (Quarantine, What is Old is New by Ian Arthur Cameron)?
From the original text, it looks like:
Notes 18 and 19 don't link to anything.
A: What ereader are you using? It could be the reading software. When I opened up the ebook in iBooks, all the notes work. I also opened it in Thorium and it worked. If you don't have Thorium you can download it here.
Q: I have a follow up question about the poetry book, How to Dress a Fish. In your answer below regarding the sections of text that are censored with a black box, you said, "Keep the black boxes and add the alt-text "thick black line that blocks out word" ". I'm just looking for some clarification around this.
I expected that the black boxes would be images of black boxes since you said to add alt-text for them. I've actually found that all the black boxes I've encountered so far (I'm about 30% through) are regular text in the docx file - so, I can see the word that was originally blacked out in the text and there are no images of black boxes to add alt-text to.
So, to format it to be like the original, I was deleting the word meant to be blacked out and then inserting the Unicode that you gave me for another poetry book, U+25AC. But I just realized that I can instead highlight the word that needs to be blacked out and use the highlight tool to make it black. Then it looks just like the original. Is it okay to proceed that way? There are also some words that are highlighted grey but still legible and I thought I could apply this technique to these as well. Does highlighting words work when you do the XML markup? If this approach won't work, should I stick with the Unicode symbol of a black bar?
A: Sorry for the confusion. Highlighting is not accessible, most direct formatting is not which is why we rely so heavy on styles. Your original approach to deleting and inserting the black bar is the best way to go. Keep it as close to the original as possible. Great work!
Q: I have a formatting question from Zagreb One Four. Could you look at the attached page where there are transcripts of the conversations between the pilots and the air traffic control? I'm not sure about how to format these. They appear as columns but they are time-stamped two way conversations so I'm not sure if columns would be the most accessible way to present the text? I see on the wiki that columns are rarely used and usually better as a table or list. I tried formatting each line of dialogue as a list but I wasn't sure if that was right.
A: Great question! In this case columns are definitely not a good choice, so good call on that one. I would approach this the same way you approach dialogue in a play.
Example:
09.5522" Zagred: Adria 548, level check?
JP548: Out of 190 (climbing from Flight Level 190).
09.5525" Zagreb: Thank you …
Time to call 550:
0.55 50" Zagred: Adria 550, recleared 360, call passing 220.
Q: Hi, I have a new question about Magnetic Equator. I'm not sure what to make of the first stanza of the poem "alterity". Whether I view the epub file in Calibre or Adobe Reader, the lines run over top of each other. But they do so differently in the two readers so I don't think it's intentional. And then when I compare the words to my docx file, the lines are in a different order. I noticed something similar on the first page of the poem "mantra falls" but in that case the words running over top of each other only happened in Reader and not in Calibre and the lines weren't out of order so I just switched to viewing the text in Calibre.
I've also noticed that for this file, I can't enlarge the print to see if that fixes the problem. So, my question is, how do I decide what order the lines are supposed to be in for this stanza if I can't view a readable original version? Can I just trust that the docx file has it right?
Edited to add: I was having very similar issues with the next book of poetry I took, "Heft", so I tried one more thing: I tried opening the epub on a different computer than the one I usually use because it has a much bigger monitor. Lines were still overlapping in Adobe Reader but in Calibre, I can finally see the pages without any overlapping. So I think I'm good now.
A: I am glad you sorted it out. There is nothing wrong with the file, it is just an issue with the reader. If it happens again you might want to try a different reader such as Thorium that is free to all operating systems. I used it on my Windows PC laptop and the issue of overlapping lines did not occur.
Q: There is a thank you for buying this e-book published by Hachette Digital blurb at the end of The Shack Revisited. Should I set it at header 1 or should I do something else with it?
A: You can simply remove this entire section.
Q: Another question about "What the Bible is All About". This is about the glossary. It gives a pronunciation guide for many of the terms (eg. "eunuch (YOO-nuhk)" ) which includes uppercase letters to show which syllable receives the emphasis. Is it okay to leave all the uppercase letters alone and add a Prod Note explaining that screen readers may not pronounce the pronunciation guide portions correctly?
A: Yes, we can just leave as is written, since that’s the way to indicate pronunciation. An optional producer’s note at the beginning of the section is a good idea! 
Q: In the book "What the Bible is All About", there is a sort of mnemonic that I'm unsure how to format. It's in chapter 45 on page 508 when I view it in Adobe Digital Editions. It displays as follows:
Forsaking
All
I
Take
Him
So, it looks like a list but isn't really a list. And it has the first letter of each word bolded to show that they spell "Faith". For now, I have left it with each word on a separate line but not as a list and I applied Strong style to the first letter of each word to mimic how it appears in the book. Do you think there's a better way to handle it?
A: The way you handled this is correct. You don't have to format this as a list, and keep the first letter in strong style. Good work!
Q: Unsure if the tables were formatted correctly in Appendix A at the end of the book 101 ways to meeting angels by Karen Paolino.
From the Tables section of the wiki: "A caption or description should always be included to give context to a table"
I am interpreting the 'or' in 'caption or description' to mean to include one of the two (either caption or description). But given our past conversation on inclusion of alt text, perhaps i should be including both? Caption and Description? But when I followed the wiki's instructions to add a description, it was greyed out and I was unable to edit it, so only captions are present for the tables.
A: I will fix the wording in the wiki, but every table should have Alt-Text. When it comes to not being able to access the Alt-Text in the table priorities, it looks like this is an issue with they way the document was saved. Just resave and replace the document using the 'Save As' option and double check to ensure it is saving as a .docx file. It will prompt you to replace the file, just accept and replace the file. It should now work!
I creates a short video to illustrate what I mean: https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cYn6q2wTtP
Word is a finicky beast!
Q: I'm just about finished this book but am having difficulty with one section: the Photo Credits at the end. They provide credit for some of the photos but I'm having a hard time telling which credit goes with which photos. They appear to be referring to roman numeral page numbers within the photo inserts but when I view the epub file in Calibre or in Adobe Digital Editions, I don't see the page numbers in the photo section so I have no idea which photos are on which page. So I can't tell which credit goes with which photo. I'm also not sure how to format this section. It seems a bit like an index where it's pointing the reader to specific pages so I was going to treat it like an index and format it as a list with a Prod Note about the page numbers being included but not valid. And then I was going to copy each photo credit and add it to the caption for the photo it belongs to (but then ran into the problem of not knowing which credit belongs to which photo).
A: First off–wow this is terribly formatted. Now to your questions:
I opened the book up in Calibre, and looked at the photo credit section. The text at the top of the section states that all photos are copyright Stevie Cameron expect where otherwise noted. Then the hyperlinked list goes directly to the images that are NOT credited to Stevie Cameron, and the clue to which image that is in in the hyperlink text. For instance, the first on is the top image on the page ( ii (top) Toronto Star/GetStock.) I am still not sure what the roman numerals are, but they are confusing. Following that logic you can identify each image as it hyperlinks to the respective pages. Since we don't use page numbers the best way to deal with this section is just take each copyright statement and add it into the end of the captions for each image (or as a caption itself if the image has no caption.) Then erase the hyperlinked list, but retain the section with the opening sentences and add an inline producers note explaining what you changed (i.e. in the original book the additional copyright information was presented as a hyperlinked list. Due to the conversion process we have reformatted that information to be included in the captions of the images respectively…or something along those lines.) Let me know if you have more questions. I am also gonna copy this to the Q&A section of the wiki.
As for locating page numbers in Calibre, there is a text bar in the top left corner of the E-Book viewer that shows the page numbers (e.g. 486.0/1435 is page 486 out of 1435)
Q: In Murach's Python Programming, there are many pages that are captioned and referred to elsewhere as "Figures". (For example, page 25 in the PDF file is labeled as "Figure 1-1" and page 27 is "Figure 1-2". I looked ahead a few chapters and it actually looks like almost every other page is a "Figure"). These Figures contain a mixture of tables, images and text. I'm wondering what the best way is to handle these. Would it make sense to treat them as textboxes so they are marked off from the regular text and move the figure caption to the top of the page and make it a heading within the textbox? My concern is that if I treat them as an image with a caption - which seems to be the current format - the user won't be able to navigate to them when they're referenced in the main text. What's your advice?
A: You do not have to treat them as a textbox, you can just move the header up to the beginning and assign it the correct hierarchy (i.e. make it lower that the headers above it.) When it comes to the images themselves, they seem to have been converted in different ways, and should be treated case-by-case. For example, in Figure 1-1 converted all as text. The four general purposes should be a list (you can treat the header of this list as normal text. My reasoning here is that not all the headings in these figures work as headings for accessibility–for instance the table would become a caption. Since this is the case we should try and be consistent and avoid confusion by treating these particular headings as either captions or normal text depending on the context. This can help make the document more uniform in conversion. Does that make sense?) For the next part, which is the table, the header would be the caption of the table, and then for the next section the header can be treated as normal text. In Figure 1-2, you can cut the image up into three images with the headers as captions. Remember, if you do have an image that is text (in these cases HTML examples) you can transcribe them into inline producers notes. This is a complicated book, so if you have any other questions do not hesitate to ask.
Q: In the book A Girl Named Lovely, there is the following sentence: "Of that, C$128 million was matched by the government, adding up to C$282 million." I know text-to-speech software can handle the $ just fine but when I run it through Word's built in TTS, it doesn't interpret it as "Canadian Dollars" as intended. Is it okay if I change the sentence to "Of that, 128 million Canadian Dollars was matched…"?
A: In this case leave it as it is, most advanced screen readers will be able to read it.
Q: I'm working on the book The Gospel in Every Book of the Old Testament. It has a mistake in its end notes. There is one note listed at the back of the book that has no corresponding superscript number in the text. If I leave the note out of the text to reflect the book, the reader will have no way to see the citation since we don't retain the book's version of the list of endnotes. I'm fairly certain I know where the superscript number is supposed to go - is it okay to add it in? Or should I let the mistake stand since that's how the published book is?
A: In this case, you should enter the superscript number in the section if you are confident you know where it goes. This is clearly a typo, and the type of typo that would make accessibility tricky. Good eye.
Q: There is also a mistake in the numbering of the chapters: no chapter 25 and two chapter 28s. Should I fix that to help with navigation or leave it as is?
A: You are correct, in this case we would want to fix this since it would hinder navigation.
Q: I'm working on Pelleteur de Nuages and there is some kind of weird code in the word doc that's making it very difficult to work with. Here's a screenshot to help explain:
There's a curly bracket at the beginning that if I try to delete it, deletes the entire text. It's somehow connected to everything that follows. If I click it, the entire text is highlighted. I think it's the source of my problems but I don't know how to get rid of it.
The whole file is very slow and tends to crash. I also can't figure out how to get the text to be black on white instead of highlighted grey. I've gone ahead and started editing it, but it's very slow going and I thought you might know how to get rid of the hidden code that's slowing things down?
A: All the links are still active within the document. I downloaded the document to see if I could find the issue. I followed the steps of starting a document (Delete all styles, upload NNELS template.) The next steps should always be Select All and Clear all Formatting followed by Select All and Remove All Links. There is a section on the wiki that shows you how to do this in Windows and Mac: Links. Start from the original converted file, and go through all the above steps. When I did this on my computer everything worked out, and the file was not slow at all. We all know Word can be wonky, so it is always good to start from the beginning in these cases. After you do this, and you still have an issue, let me know.
Q: Just checking whether the inline citation procedure for internal links applies to an index? The book I'm working on (City of Omens) has an extensive index with links instead of page numbers. For example, the entry for a person named Alaniz, Victor has 8 internal links after his name that each just say "here" instead of page numbers. Should I go through each link and replace it with the name of the chapter where the link takes me to? (this book is not subdivided any further than chapters, there are no section headings so I'm just not sure how useful this would be to the reader since the chapters are fairly long).
A: Since DAISY does not support such links, we will have to treat them like other inline citations and replace them with the Chapter Headings. Another idea is to do See 'Insert Phrase' in Chapter #, I am not sure if this would work for each, but it may be a workaround for the limitations of the reader.
Q: I'm trying to add alt-text to the tables in His Needs, Her Needs but the area where I type the alt-text is greyed out:
I'm using the newest version of Word and I tried closing it and reopening it but it's still greyed out. Any suggestions?
A: Try saving the document as .docx and it should work. If you have done this and still have problems please let me know.
Q: This book has a couple endnotes throughout, but also has this kind of thing:
Which is then referenced at the end of Chapter 11 with relevant bible quotes and some author commentary:
How should I proceed?
A: The first set of quotes are actually titles of Subsections. If you click on them they take you to the TOC of the EPUB, and vice versa. The Number and Quotes are listed as Subsection in the TOC in the EPUB. So you will need to style they as Sub Headings (e.g. 1:“God is not a whole lot different from me.” [Heading 3 Style-which seems to be the next heading down if I am going by the EPUBS TOC.])
As for the Second Set, this is a bit trickier since they are not in the EPUB TOC, they are not Hyperlinked, but they have the same styling as the other numbered quotes. Since the publisher has used the same font style as the other numbered quotes, you should stick to consistency and style them also as subheadings.
Q: This book has an "Author's note" section listed 3 times throughout which asks readers to rate and review the book on Amazon.com or "wherever you purchased it from." The note is the same in all instances. Should I leave all 3 instances of this text in the book? Or remove some of them?
A: You can simply remove these sections.
Q: The book I'm working on has the following section near the beginning:
Ebook Instructions In this ebook edition, please use your device's note-taking function to record your thoughts wherever you see the bracketed instructions [Your notes] or [Your response]. Use your device's highlighting function to record your response whenever you are asked to checkmark, circle, underline, or otherwise indicate your answer(s).
I'm unsure how to handle this since the end user won't be able to record their notes or responses in our version. Should I leave it in or delete it?
A: You can remove this section.
Q: The book I'm working on isn't EPUB or PDF - it's .azw3 (Kindle format, I believe). I have an e-book viewer on my laptop so I used that to open it but now I don't know how to extract images. I tried the EPUB method of changing the file extension to .zip but that didn't work. In my e-book viewer, there's an option to print the book as a PDF. So I can convert it to PDF but I'm wondering whether this will preserve the image quality? Do you think converting it to PDF and then extracting the images from there is my best option for dealing with images in the book?
A: Great Question. To answer this I created a page on the wiki on how to extract images from Kindle (.azw3) files.
Q: My current book has a lot of instances of a symbol with "L SEP" in a dotted lined box. So far, they all look like they could be replaced with a space. Is there a known way to use Find and Replace to easily replace these?
A: So that box means there was an issue with the font when it was converted. First, make sure what the box is representing. In the case of your file it is representing a blank space. As far as I have been able to research, this is the main thing it tends represent, but it is best to be safe and just double check. The quickest way to do this is using your Find & Replace window.
- First open your Find & Replace window,
- and then select the L SEP box with your cursor, make sure it is highlighted,
- and copy it.
- Then past it into the find box and hit find all.
It will show you every location it is in the file, then you can just scan through and ensure that it is only representing a blank space. If this is the case then you can use the Find & Replace window to replace them all. To do this simply
- put your cursor into the Replace box and hit your space bar once,
- then hit Replace All
and you are done! Here is a link to a video that shows you what I did: https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cqjODGtbvf
I will also update the Find & Replace section of the wiki to show these instructions.
Q: What about emoticons? The book I'm working on quotes an email that uses ; - ) to represent a winky face emoticon. Should I leave it as is? I'm tempted to replace it with [winky face] so that it makes more sense when read by a screen reader.
A: Great question. You should replace it with a proper emoticon symbol, since we don't want to change the original too much and people who have partial sight do read our books. TTS can read emoticons, and you should treat them like other symbols and enter them in using Unicode. The directions on how to set up Unicode are on the Symbols & Abbreviations/Acronyms page (I put in a new heading 'Using Unicode for Symbols'.) You can use the search feature on the page that lists all the Unicode. For example, I searched winky face and it gave me the Unicode here.
Q: Further to the question below, the book I'm working on has hundreds of instances where a space between two words was missing. It seemed like some kind of conversion glitch rather than a typo or mis-spelling. Is it okay to re-insert the spaces so that TTS software can read it better?
A: Good eye. You are correct in your assumption. So these are not spelling mistakes, but an error that can occur in conversion with some types of books. You can get this A LOT with PDF's, or books that used hard hyphenation in the ebook. In these cases you will want to go through and re insert those lost spaces. Unfortunately, currently we do not have a way to do this other than manually. If you figure out a faster way to do it let us all know. Good luck and thanks for taking this on!
Q: I feel this was addressed somewhere else, but I cannot find where. If we come across a spelling error made in the original work, do we leave them as is?
A: You leave any spelling errors as is. Our jobs are to reformat the books to be DAISY compatible, so we avoid edits of the content as much as possible. Let me know if you need more clarification on this.
Q: How should I handle mentions of World War II? Do I leave the "II" as is, change it to 2, or something else?
A: You can leave it as is. Most TTS software is able to read it properly.
Q: I am working on a book that uses internet language. For instance there are hastags (#) and there are @ symbols to indicate atSarah, i.e. @Sarah. How should we format these?
A: For hashtag and @ text strings, or any text that is strung together it is important to put them in Camel Case. In this way, most screen readers will read it properly and it’s also easier for sighted readers to read the text when it’s like that. For example: #accessiblereadingforthewin can be edited to #AccessibleReadingForTheWin
As for the hashtag symbol itself, nothing special needs to be done—you can simply use the # (number sign) key on your keyboard. Any symbols that exist on your keyboard or in MS Word itself can be inserted as usual.
Q: My book contains several references and citations that have been numerically referenced and hyperlinked to a list of endnotes at the end of the book. After removing the hyperlinks, how should I deal with these numerical endnotes throughout the text?
Example below.
Inline text: All systems are perfectly organized to achieve the results they get, and the Canadian healthcare system is no different.1
In Endnote: 1 This idea has been attributable to various authors including David Hanna, Paul Plsek, and even Albert Einstein. Within the healthcare setting the idea has been attributed to Dr. Paul Batalden.
Thank you!!
A: That is a great question. You will have to reinsert all the endnotes. We have to do this for all types of notes, be it footnotes or endnotes. We have a really great section on Footnotes/Endnotes that also as some great tutorials that will help you out. Let us know if you need more clarification.
Q: When a book has a title and subtitle, should the subtitle be the same heading 1 as the title? Or should it be heading 2 or normal text? Thank you!
A: You can head the title page section with the words "Title Page" and give this text the Heading 1 style. The text that follows (Title, Author, Publisher, etc., should be "Normal".
Q: Just a quick clarification on the remove all page breaks request…does this mean that every page should just continue on to the next? Even between different chapters?
A: Yes, all page breaks should be removed, unless the user has requested that pagination be retained. To remove all page breaks, you can do a Find and Replace:
Find: ^m
Replace:
^m stands for manual page break.
Q: I am working on The Boat People, and in the Discussion Questions section, the ePub navigates to the section of the book it is referring to in the question (i.e. saying "On this page…"). I wasn't sure how to incorporate this navigation in the etext version, so I added this producer's note and added the chapter names beside where the "this page" reference was:
Start Producer’s Note
Page numbers have not been retained in this digital version of The Boat People. In the original digital book, some of the questions refer to “this page”, linking the reader to the page. We have added chapter references in brackets for easier navigation, since page numbers have not been retained in this digital copy.
End Producer’s Note
Example from the text with chapter names added:
6. On this page (Family Business), Grace’s mother, Kumi, describes how her parents “kept quiet” about what the family endured during the internment of Japanese Canadians, because they “thought they were protecting us.” Later, on this page (Don’t Rock the Boat), Grace recalls her grandmother telling her to “Focus on tomorrow.
Was this the correct way to approach this problem? What could I have done differently?
A: Interesting question. I think that's a good approach, although maybe not ideal as, like you say, it doesn't link to the exact location in the book (refers people to the general Chapter as opposed to the specific page).
Q: Another TTS question: will things like "I had a 16' dinghy" and "there were 5.5" medium guns" be said as feet and inches?
A: It would depend on the text-to-speech software being used. VoiceOver (Mac's built-in TTS) recognizes these as measurements and reads them as such, i.e. "five feet five inches" and "16 foot dinghy". If you're using Mac and are curious how text is read, you can enable TTS (same if you're using Windows, which uses Narrator).
Q: I'm almost positive that I know the answer to this one (TTS is smart!) but just wanted to double check: Should ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, etc.) be written out all in normal text? Or should the abbreviated letters be superscript, as Word prompts them to be when typed out?
A: How things are read aloud depends on the TTS software being used, but yes - generally TTS is smart :) I tested it on my Mac (which uses VoiceOver) and it reads "1st" and 1st with the st as superscript the same way – as "first". I've yet to come across a case where numbers are misread.
Q: The opening sections of Theomatics are all signed off by the author of that section including their a sign off, full name, and either the date or an address. How should I format this?
A: This can be formatted as normal paragraph text.
Q What should I do with the following section:
A: We can remove this section.
Q: What do we do if we notice an obvious formatting error in the ePub version (and Word version) of the book? In Sex Made Easy, there are numbered subheadings and the author has written #70 twice and has skipped #72. Is this something I should correct?
A: The DTB should reflect the original text, errors and all (unfortunately we're not editing for writing). We can tell the reader about this issue in the Producer's Note section of the book.
Q: How does DAISY read ellipses? I have been editing ellipses with spaces between or more than three points (ex: . . . . ) to three points with a space at the end (ex: … ) but I’m not sure if this matters or if it’s correct; it was more just based on assumption and/or personal preference. Thoughts?
A: How the TTS reads depends on 2 main things: a) the software and b) user's customized settings. As for editing, if it's unclear how to transcribe something based on the original text, we should look up the proper way to do it; for example, we can refer to a style guide, such as Chicago or APA. Here's what Chicago has to say about ellipsis: Style Guide: Punctuation
