Four years ago, I wrote a post titled “Drop Caps, Indents, and Other Formatting Tricks in Word.” Regarding drop caps, I mentioned that Word drops and enlarges the first character, which, if you’re writing dialogue, means it’s your quotation mark that gets dropped and enlarged instead of the first letter. Some authors and editors get around this issue by simply leaving off the opening quotation mark.
At the end of that discussion, I said: “There are those who believe leaving off the first quote mark is confusing to readers. Luckily, there’s a workaround in Word for those who want the quote mark, but it’s time consuming. More on that in a future post.”
I’m a little late with that future post (sorry, Anthony!). Truthfully, my workaround stopped working momentarily after a Word update, but it’s back now. It’s a wonky sort of workaround, but it does work. Continue reading “Drop Caps and Quotation Marks: A Workaround”
There’s an ongoing debate on the Kindle Direct Publishing forum regarding formatting and uploading eBooks in Microsoft Word. Some believe it can’t be done. Others insist it can. I’m on the “can” side of the debate. The key is in making sure your document is free of any hidden code, markups, page breaks, etc.
Guest Post
You have probably already heard about the latest sky-is-falling report involving KDP. An online publication (which shall remain nameless, as it’s well-known for publishing unsubstantiated clickbait, but whose initials are Good Ereader) struck fear into the hearts of many indie authors last week, when it announced that starting February 3rd, Amazon would begin pulling from sale any eBooks reported to have typos or formatting issues.