Anyone who is evaluating the quality of the ePubs produced by the PG tool would be well advised to learn the ePub and XHTML specifications, unzip the subject ePub and examine the markup by hand. There's simply too much variation among User Agents to be able to come to any valid conclusion any other way.
Let us remember that you are defending a pile of weirdness that PG is generating from one and/or another PG tool. One doesn't really need to unzip and and reverse-engineer the generated EPUB, because one can start by looking at the generated HTML. The generated EPUB, and the further generated MOBI, can only go downhill from there. One can start by taking a look at the CSS used for the HTML, and maybe a little bit of the generated HTML code, and see what one thinks there about this particular approach: CSS: ===== Any generated element will have a class "tei" and a class "tei-elem" where elem is the element name in TEI. The order of statements is important !!! */ .tei { margin: 0; padding: 0; font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal } .block { display: block; } .inline { display: inline; } .floatleft { float: left; margin: 1em 2em 1em 0; } .floatright { float: right; margin: 1em 0 1em 2em; } .shaded { margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 1em; background-color: #eee; } .boxed { margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 1em; border: 1px solid black; } body.tei { margin: 4ex 10%; text-align: justify } div.tei { margin: 2em 0em } p.tei { margin: 0em 0em 1em 0em; text-indent: 0em; } blockquote.tei { margin: 2em 4em } div.tei-lg { margin: 1em 0em; } div.tei-l { margin: 0em; text-align: left; } div.tei-tb { text-align: center; } div.tei-epigraph { margin: 0em 0em 1em 10em; } div.tei-dateline { margin: 1ex 0em; text-align: right } div.tei-salute { margin: 1ex 0em; } div.tei-signed { margin: 1ex 0em; text-align: right } div.tei-byline { margin: 1ex 0em; } /* calculate from size of body = 80% */ div.tei-marginnote { margin: 0em 0em 0em -12%; width: 11%; float: left; } div.tei-sp { margin: 1em 0em 1em 2em } div.tei-speaker { margin: 0em 0em 1em -2em; font-weight: bold; text-indent: 0em } div.tei-stage { margin: 1em 0em; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic } span.tei-stage { font-weight: normal; font-style: italic } div.tei-eg { padding: 1em; color: black; background-color: #eee } hr.doublepage { margin: 4em 0em; height: 5px; } hr.page { margin: 4em 0em; height: 2px; } ul.tei-index { list-style-type: none } dl.tei { margin: 1em 0em } dt.tei-notelabel { font-weight: normal; text-align: right; float: left; width: 3em } dd.tei-notetext { margin: 0em 0em 1ex 4em } span.tei-pb { position: absolute; left: 1%; width: 8%; font-style: normal; } span.code { font-family: monospace; font-size: 110%; } ul.tei-castlist { margin: 0em; list-style-type: none } li.tei-castitem { margin: 0em; } table.tei-castgroup { margin: 0em; } ul.tei-castgroup { margin: 0em; list-style-type: none; padding-right: 2em; border-right: solid black 2px; } caption.tei-castgroup-head { caption-side: right; width: 50%; text-align: left; vertical-align: middle; padding-left: 2em; } *.tei-roledesc { font-style: italic } *.tei-set { font-style: italic } table.rules { border-collapse: collapse; } table.rules caption, table.rules th, table.rules td { border: 1px solid black; } table.tei { border-collapse: collapse; } table.tei-list { width: 100% } th.tei-head-table { padding: 0.5ex 1em } th.tei-cell { padding: 0em 1em } td.tei-cell { padding: 0em 1em } td.tei-item { padding: 0; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: top; text-align: left; } th.tei-label, td.tei-label { width: 3em; padding: 0; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: top; text-align: right; } th.tei-label-gloss, td.tei-label-gloss { text-align: left } td.tei-item-gloss, th.tei-headItem-gloss { padding-left: 4em; } img.tei-formula { vertical-align: middle; } </style> ========== Start of the Generated Code (verbatim): <body class="tei"> <div lang="en" class="tei tei-text" style="margin-bottom: 2.00em; margin-top: 2.00em" xml:lang="en"> <div class="tei tei-front" style="margin-bottom: 6.00em; margin-top: 2.00em"> <div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em"> <div id="pgheader" class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 4.00em; margin-top: 4.00em"><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 3.00em; margin-top: 3.00em"><p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 2.00em">The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bible Readings for the Home Circle</p></div><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 3.00em; margin-top: 3.00em"><p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License <a href="#pglicense" class="tei tei-ref">included with this eBook</a> or online at <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license" class="tei tei-xref">http://www.gutenberg.org/license</a></p></div><pre class="pre tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 3.00em; margin-top: 3.00em">Title: Bible Readings for the Home Circle