still doing some last-minute stuff on huck finn... once again, as usual, i am struck by the required amount of attention-to-detail involved in polishing text for an e-book. even for an obsessive type like myself, it can overwhelm... (although, it should be said, most books are _not_ as hard as this one, which presents a variety of atypical challenges.) sometimes even something you think is going to be _simple_ ends up using more time and energy that you want it to take. just as an example, i did very little work on italics as i was cleaning up this text for "adventures of huckleberry finn", since i planned on splicing in the italics from jim's #32325. except now, in my confirmation work, i found at least _ten_ instances where jim might well have missed an italics word. (can't say for sure, because i don't know exactly what edition he used, but at least according to my edition, he missed 'em.) that's not a criticism of jim, or the quality of his work, since -- for all i know -- my file might be missing a dozen more... the whole reason i decided to import jim's italics is because i hate italics-checking, and it is hard, and time-consuming, and i miss lots of 'em, so the entire exercise is frustrating... of course, _part_ of the problem here is that i am trying to move this book as close to perfection as i can, when really, i should just say "ok, let's bring in the smoothreaders now." that "smoothreader" stage is an important one, because that's where the cost-benefit ratio achieves its primacy... smoothreaders will _not_ necessarily catch _every_ error. but, in a nutshell, if smoothreaders don't catch an error, then it's probably the case that the error is unimportant. the object, of course, is to move every e-book to perfection. but that can _cost_ more than the _benefit_ would be worth. if an error is so slight that it's not even _noticed_, then -- the odds are -- it is unimportant enough to matter much, so the act of detecting and fixing it simply _isn't_worth_it._ there are lots of cases, for instance, where it's hard to tell if something is a semicolon or a colon. but does it matter? probably not. especially since the typesetter didn't seem to be following any kind of consistent rule deciding between 'em, even in the cases where there is no uncertainty which one it is. sometimes it's hard to know, then, when to let something go... that's why smoothreaders can be so useful... -bowerbird