I suggest that planning in terms of semantic markup in place of presentation markup could simplify the task of preparing texts for PG. If the semantic elements are properly identified, the software can easily apply the appropriate markup for each device.

Here are a few items from the DP formatting guidelines.

Chapter Headings

Format chapter headings as they appear in the image. A chapter heading may start a bit farther down the page than the page header and won't have a page number on the same line. Chapter Headings are often printed all caps; if so, keep them as all caps. Mark any italics or mixed case small caps that appear in the image.

Put 4 blank lines before the "CHAPTER XXX". Include these blank lines even if the chapter starts on a new page; there are no 'pages' in an e-book, so the blank lines are needed. Then separate with a blank line each additional part of the chapter heading, such as a chapter description, opening quote, etc., and finally leave two blank lines before the start of the text of the chapter.

Old books often printed the first word or two of every chapter in all caps or small caps; change these to upper and lower case (first letter only capitalized).

While chapter headings may appear to be bold or spaced out, these are usually the result of font or font size changes and should not be marked. The extra blank lines separate the heading, so do not mark the font change as well. See the first example below.

Replace with

Identify chapter headings with a chapter heading tag; e.g. <chapter-heading>Chapter 1.</chapter-heading>. The software will then be able to find the first letters of chapters and apply drop-caps if you really want them and the device supports them.


Section Headings

Some books have sections within chapters. Format these headings as they appear in the image. Leave 2 blanks lines before the heading and one after, unless the Project Manager has requested otherwise. If you are not sure if a heading indicates a chapter or a section, post a question in the Project Discussion, noting the page number.

Mark any italics or mixed case small caps that appear in the image. While section headings may appear to be bold or spaced out, these are usually the result of font or font size changes and should not be marked. The extra blank lines separate the heading, so do not mark the font change as well.

Replace with

Identify sections with section tags, and identify the section heading, if any, with section-heading tagls.

Other Major Divisions in Texts

Major Divisions in the text such as Preface, Foreword, Table of Contents, Introduction, Prologue, Epilogue, Appendix, References, Conclusion, Glossary, Summary, Acknowledgements, Bibliography, etc., should be formatted in the same way as Chapter Headings, i.e. 4 blank lines before the heading and 2 blank lines before the start of the text.

Replace with

Note that the instructions say to use chapter heading formatting rules, hopefessly defeating any expectation that chapter heading formatting rules will unambiguously tell the software where the chapters are.

Instead, just mark the divisions with the proper tags (<toc>, <intro>, <prologue>, etc.) and the headings with the proper tags (<toc-heading>, etc.)