The Ebook Style Guide
References
Anything we’ve quoted or referred to in The Ebook Style Guide is listed here. In some cases, we’ve added a few notes to jog your memory about the topic.
Preface
The Institute for the Future of the Book
Introduction
You’ve Got Style: A Writer’s Guide to Copyediting, by Carla Douglas and C.K. MacLeod, for the least you need to know about copyediting
About
See our reading and writing titles at Don’t Panic Books
1 Parts of Ebook
How to Read an Ebook, by C.K. MacLeod
Copyright Page Samples You can Copy and Paste Into Your Book, by Joel Friedlander
Introduction vs preface in You’ve Got Style: A Writer’s Guide to Copyediting, by Carla Douglas and C.K. MacLeod
An example of when an author bio is important in Overcoming SAD: The Happy Hippie Yoga-Chick’s Guide to Beating Winter Flip-Out, by Karen Bergen
Call to action tips in Write. Publish. Repeat: The No-Luck Required Guide to Self-Publishing Success, by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant
2 Contents Page
Example of an at-a-glance contents page in Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
3 Navigation Menu
How to Move Through a Book on Your Kindle Paperwhite, by Leslie H. Nicoll
How to create a nested navigation menu in Creating Ebooks for the Kindle(Lynda.com course), by Tony Harmer
Explanation of how to create a NavMap in Creating Great Ebooks Using Jutoh, by Julian Smart
Clever and clear headings in Knit It! Learn the Basics and Knit 22 Beautiful Projects, by Melissa Leapman
Do’s and Don’ts of Choosing a Good Title, by Carla Douglas
4 Heading Levels
Example of a nested navigation menu in Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, by K.M. Weiland
How to punctuate and capitalize headings, in You’ve Got Style: Copyediting for Self-Publishing Authors, by Carla Douglas and C.K. MacLeod
How to Embed a Font in an Epub or Kindle Ebook, by Suzanne Parrott
5 Sentence, Paragraph, and Book Length
How to Make Your Writing More Readable, by Carla Douglas
A Healthy Bite-Sized Digital Lifestyle, by David Armano
Example of a searchable book app for long nonfiction reference books: Olive Tree Bible app
6 Paragraph Styles
Fun With Formatting Ebooks: Paragraph Style, by JW Manus
Ebook formatting options, in Idea to Ebook: How to Write a Quality Book Fast, by C.K. MacLeod
How to Use Styles for a Professional Ebook Conversion, by Rob O’Byrne
7 Drop Caps and Small Caps
Drop caps work-around, in the Jutoh manual
HTML fundamentals in Anatomy of an HTML Page, by John Espirian
8 Fonts
Rob Siders, comments, in Where Can I Legally Use My Fonts, by David Bergsland
How to stay on the right side of the law, in Where Can I Legally Use My Fonts, by David Bergsland
Where to find open-source fonts, in Idea to Ebook: How to Write a Quality Book Fast, by C.K. MacLeod
Kindle Publishing cheat sheet, in Ebook Formatting for Kindle Publishing, by Corina Koch MacLeod
Lulu cheat sheet, in Ebook Formatting for Lulu, by Corina Koch MacLeod
9 Special Characters
Alt Codes / Alt Key Codes, at usefulshortscuts.com
List of keyboard shortcuts for Word users, by Suzanne Barnhill
List of keyboard shortcuts for Mac users, by Washington State University
Alt Codes For Foreign Language Letters with Accents, at usefulshortscuts.com
20-Minute Macro Course, by C.K. MacLeod
Macro script, in How to Change Straight Quotes to Curly Quotes in Word, at extendoffice.com
Fix typographical characters with FileCleaner
Spaced ellipsis, in Punctuation Purgatory: The Em Dash and the Ellipsis, by JW Manus
Zero-width nonbreaking spaces, in Avoiding Bad Punctuation Breaks in Ebooks, by Derrick Schultz
Screen captures for math equations, in Math (ML) in Education Digital Content, by Richard Pipe
See Ebooks for Math and Science group for current developments in equations in ebooks
Foot and Inch Marks trick in Butterick’s Practical Typography, by Matthew Butterick
Formatting: HTML Codes for Special Characters and Symbols, by Suzanne Fyrhie Parrott
10 End-of-Line Breaks
Avoiding Bad Punctuation Breaks in Ebooks with zero-width nonbreaking spaces, by Derrick Schultz
Controlling end-of-line breaks with nonbreaking spaces, in From Word to Kindle, by Aaron Shepard
11 Lists
Learn HTML with w3schools tutorials
Tips for punctuating lists, in You’ve Got Style: A Writer’s Guide to Copyediting, by Carla Douglas and C.K. MacLeod
12 Sidebars and Pull Quotes
Style sidebars with HTML and CSS, in the Ebook Design and Development Guide, by Paul Salvette
Format sidebars using Book Design templates for Microsoft Word
Kindle Textbook Creator for complex book design and layout
13 Block Quotes and Pull Quotes
Indenting block quotes, in From Word to Kindle, by Aaron Shepard
Punctuating other people’s words, in You’ve Got Style: A Writer’s Guide to Copyediting, by Carla Douglas and C.K. MacLeod
14 Images, Tables, and Graphs
Preparing Images for Ebooks, by C.K. MacLeod
Pictures on Kindle, by Aaron Shepherd
Handling tables, in Web Standards for Ebooks, by Joe Clark
Creating a Table in Scrivener, by Rebecca Schiller
How to style a table using HTML and CSS, in Ebook Design and Development Guide, by Paul Salvette
Kindle Textbook Creator for complex book design and layout
15 Captions
Styling captions, in You’ve Got Style: A Writer’s Guide to Copyediting, by Carla Douglas and C.K. MacLeod
Anchoring captions, in Ebook Design and Development Guide, by Paul Salvette
Kindle Textbook Creator for complex book design and layout
Flexible option for handling captions, in Pictures on Kindle, by Aaron Shepherd
16 Section Separators
Alt codes for special symbols used in section separators
Ebook Ornaments, by JW Manus
Nymphette font for section separators, by Lauren Thompson at Font Squirrel
17 Fractions
Alt codes for fractions
Unicode characters for “vulgar fractions,” by Alan Wood
Rules for using fractions in books, in You’ve Got Style: A Writer’s Guide to Copyediting, by Carla Douglas and C.K. MacLeod
18 Hyperlinks
Develop an efficient writing and publishing workflow, in Idea to Ebook: How to Write a Quality Book Fast, by C.K. MacLeod
An elegant approach to handling links in ebooks, by Michael A. Koontz
Check broken links on your web page with Broken Link Checker
19 Footnotes and Endnotes
Use italics for footnotes, in From Word to Kindle, by Aaron Shepard
Chapter endnotes in Jutoh
Chapter endotes in Sigil
20 Citations
Bob Stein’s thoughts on The Future of the Book
Citing with endnotes in Jutoh
Citing with endotes in Sigil
21 Appendixes
Example of an interactive PDF, at Don’t Panic Books
Example of a downloadable PDF, at Tech Tools for Writers
22 Reference List or Bibliography
Learn how to handle book titles, in You’ve Got Style: A Writer’s Guide to Copyediting, by Carla Douglas and C.K. MacLeod
23 Indexes
Creating indexes in Adobe InDesign, by Lucie Haskins
Extras
Creating Ebooks that Work Checklist