Hi all,
Forgive me if this has been addressed elsewhere, but I browsed around and I didn’t find a good answer.
How to preserve italics after compiling to Epub? I tried Format > Formatting > Preserve Formatting, but it did not work: font size changed.
The only solution is to check “As-Is”? If so, what font and font size should I use to uniform that “As-Is” paragraph to the rest of the Epub?
And if I have a novel to compile with a lot of italics words here and there, what I have to do? To check “As-Is” and then to adjust every paragraph with italics words?
There is a better solution to preserve italics?
Thanks,
Francesco
Normally you should not have to do anything special. There must be a conflict of settings somewhere.
Do you have the option enabled in the Transformations compile option pane to convert italics to underscores? This is typically more useful in a submission manuscript, so it is often on in the starter templates where it would be relevant.
Preserve Formatting is a range based tool. You select some text and apply it to the text. It’s useful if you use blockquotes, sub-section headings or anything else that shouldn’t be reformatted to body text by the compiler.
Compile As-Is is a per-document setting, and best used when there is one section that should just be passed through as it. Consequently it is most useful for things like the title page and the dedication. Neither of these tools are meant to be used wholesale. If you’ve spent the time to format your work in the editor, you can just switch off the whole formatting apparatus for body text in the Formatting compile option pane with the checkbox at the top.
This is all just general info. If italics are being converted globally then formatting panes and as-is and all that won’t make a difference (Formatting override is specifically programmed to preserve inline formatting like italics, as hardly anyone would want to obliterate them). If switching the conversion off does not work, or if it was never on to begin with, then let me know which device you are using to preview the e-book, what font you have chosen for main text the Formatting compile pane (some do not support italics) and anything else you think might be relevant.
Thank you very much for your complete answer, this forum is amazing and very useful (as much as Scrivener, of course).
I solved my problem: I had chosen a font which doesn’t support italics. It was the default ebook font, I think. Anyway, what’s the best (most used) font to compile a mobi ebook?
All the best!
For the most part fonts are not something you need to worry too much about with e-book publishing. Most e-book reading devices are going to supply the user with a predetermined selection of fonts, which may vary from one or two fonts like the earlier Kindles, to maybe six to eight fonts like the Fire and Paperwhite. Either way, the reader typically chooses the font they wish to read all of their books in. So whatever you choose will end up getting overridden anyway, if it even could be chosen to begin with (not every device lets the publisher specify this at all, and all of the that do only do so as an option that is typically off by default, so we might as well assume that 99% will never see the font you chose).
The important thing is just to choose a font that does have italics, so that these formatting codes can make it through to the end result. For example, in our “E-book” compile preset, we just force the body font to Optima, which is a font no e-book reader can even display, but it is a font with a wide variety of features available to it, meaning that the maximum amount of capable formatting will make it through.