On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 11:07:09PM -0700, Wally Thompson wrote:
Here is example 1, where a new paragraph begins directly after the poem:
Here is example 2, where the paragraph continues after the poem:
These examples come from the Atlantic Monthly, December 1866. The Gutenberg Ebook is located at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17217/17217-8.txt.
The Gutenberg Ebook formats both examples in the same way. So the reader of the ebook faces an ambiguity as to whether or not a new paragraph begins after the poem. In the book that I'm working on, I'm facing the same issue. I would like to make it clear to the reader weather or not a new paragraph begins after a poem. But I would also like to be consistent with other Gutenberg Ebooks.
Thanks for the question, Wally. It's a good one. You can't do both. In the same circumstances, I would change the normal conventions either a) to indent the first line of each actual paragraph or b) to introduce two blank lines, rather than one, after a poem where a new para begins after it. and clarify what I was doing, and why I was doing it, by means of a Transcriber's Note at the top of the file. There are probably other reasonable ways of indicating the necessary distinction, but the general formula of "choose one, and leave a Transcriber's Note that applies to the whole text" will work for any of them. Any general set of rules need to be bent for some texts, and the Transcriber's Note, by which you communicate to the reader how and why you rendered _this_ one differently, is a time-honored way of regularizing exceptions, so don't be too worried about complete consistency with the most common cases. jim