[Nutmog]

That's nice for a perfectionist. But how many readers care at all or could tell the difference if they tried? Do you struggle to read stories on the web because they're not hand typeset? I personally find that the content of a book completely dominates my experience over any of the superficial details. Well, I do use an annoying e-book reader that keeps accidentally turning pages for me and I lose my place. No amount of carefully placed hyphens will overcome that though, but a bit of software could.

[kevinr]

Most of those issues I mention are exactly the kinds of issues which pull the reader out of the text, even though he may not be able to pinpoint exactly why. Certainly often when I use Instapaper to read a web page or Calibre to convert ebooks I can read through the issues if I try hard enough, but it takes more effort than reading a well-produced book, and I somewhat regularly give up on automatically-converted texts because the issues are just too dire.

(Some of my other favorite conversion errors: Endnotes or references not hyperlinked. Chapters and other headings not correctly marked-up. Page numbers or other irrelevant header/footer material not stripped. Footnotes, margin notes, or other relevant header/footer material stripped. ...As you can tell, I'm great fun at cocktail parties.)