7.2 | Partition Header Issues

Text vs. Standard Chapter Headers

Display issues are a huge bone of contention with authors. There is no way possible to account for the many opinions out there, so I will stick to my guns and enforce the ‘less is more’ rule for this tutorial.

Here are some issues to consider, with examples to show the end results.

This is a ‘text’ chapter header:

This is a ‘standard’ chapter header:

This is a standard chapter header with a text subtitle:

If an author has used text chapter headers, and any of those headers are more than four or five words, consider converting the text headers to standard headers with text subtitles.

Always take into consideration those readers who read on small smartphone screens. There are a lot of them. Even larger 5x7 screens get visually noisy with these long text headers.

Behold the examples below to show why long text chapter headers aren’t a recommended practice.

Chapter Headers in EPUB Navigation

How Partition Headers Look In EPUB Navigation

Figure 1: Text chapter headers in an actual EPUB display: (This came from Adobe Digital Editions on a desktop computer. Imagine how god-awful and cramped that will look on a tiny smartphone screen.)

Standard chapter headers in an actual .EPUB display:

Remember: There’s no law that says e-books and print books have to be identical in every way. If you want to leave your text chapter headers that way in the print or PDF versions, there’s nothing stopping you. Please don’t do this in an e-book. Have mercy on readers (like me) who read on smaller screens.

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