HOW TO PREPARE AN ETEXT FOR RELEASE BY PROJECT
GUTENBERG  

[Last Updated: 22 August 1994]  

This is the file "standard.gut" which contains many
suggestions how to prepare an Etext for release by Project
Gutenberg.  

Remember: these are only suggestions. People send us files
in a variety of formats, and we are most glad to a little work
for the purpose of getting them into an easy to read
onscreen form.  

If you are interesting in editing, please ask for details on an
extraordinary effort we are making to prepare Etexts in
manners which will enhance both the readability and
searchability of an Etext by the elimination of hyphenation
and of widow/orphans on a line by line basis. This takes a
bit of work, but it results in and Etext much easier to read
than the paper book from which it was taken. Please ask for
"editing.gut".  

[editing.gut is currently appended to the bottom of this
file.]  

No indentations [anywhere other than inserted letters,
poems, etc.]. [Including none for contents, chapter
headings, etc.]  

No CAPITALIZATION of first word in a chapter, other than
first letter.  

Obviously, the first thing to do to make sure your chosen
books are clear of copyright restrictions. We will be happy
to do an assortment of copyright searches and write
clearance letters.  

When you start preparing the Etext, after getting the
copyright clearance finished:  

Please preface the file with your name, address, phone, &
email.  

Each line of your book should end with a "hard return" =
cr/lf. In DOS if you save as a DOS Text File, this is the
default. On Macs, each line needs to end with "end of
paragraph marker" In UNIX, each line needs to end with
^M.  

This is VERY important in establishing the margination, as
per the new editing policy mentioned above.  

We try to average 65, with 55 to 75 being short and long
other than for emergencies, which will extend to 51 to 79.  

You can look over any of the Project Gutenberg Etexts to
see a series of examples of how this works. You may notice
how much easier it is to read the latest novels [such as
Burroughs] due to the elimination of hyphenation, and the
remargination of an assortment of lines that previous were
split with words on the preceding or following lines that
should have been on the same line. . .but were moved for
the convenience of the publishers.  

The entire work should start with the title and end with "End
of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Name of Book" Then three
returns.  

We would like page numbers at the left column for
proofreading purposes.  

Priorities go with the more important type headers. i.e. from
end of Chapter to beginning of Part, use Part  

Title and Part type headers--5 returns after 6 before
Chapter headers--3 returns before first line. Chapter
ends--4 returns before next chapter header. Wide
paragraph separation--3 returns. Normal paragraph
separation--2 returns. End of line----one return. (These are
"hard" returns, not "soft" returns.)  

Don't worry if you can't do all this, or can't do it easily. We
expect to have to spend about ten hours on each book from
the time we start editing it until it is ready for releasing on
the networks. Adding the hard returns et. al. is an easy part
of that process, so don't feel obliged.  

Actually, in 1994 we will have to cut this to five hours, or
your erstwhile editor will die under the strain.  

Also, for those concerned about space. . .even if an
average paragraph in your book is only 100 characters, the
additions of the hard returns will only make the book a
percent longer in the end.  

We would like to receive these files in a PLAIN ASCII format
and if compressed, please use ZIP if you can. We could help
you find it, if necessary. We prefer not to use TAR and Z--
but we will if necessary. . .we would prefer to receive just
one large PLAIN ASCII file and ZIP it ourselves, rather than
the various chapters, subdirectories, etc. with TAR.Z files.  

Please name files with standard DOS filename.ext, that is
eight character filname and three for extension.  

General suggestions for the preparations of Project
Gutenberg Etexts  

In more detail than what was presented above.  

Editing policy for margination/widows/orphans is at bottom.  

Your suggestions for rewrites of this file gratefully
accepted.  

0. Please put your name, email, and other contact
information INSIDE THE FILES YOU SEND, AT THE TOP. You
may not believe how often we get files and cannot contact
the sender to get details on the edition, etc.  

1. Let us do the copyright clearance for you.  

2. Remove vestigial traces of paper publishing. A. Page
numbers [maybe the last thing to go, for reference]
[sometimes they are required, so we leave them in] B.
Hyphens at the end of lines, unless true hyphenated word
C. Widows and orphans [at page, paragraph, and line levels]
D. Remove or mark typos. [but not intentional misspellings,
and leave in intentionally bad grammar]  

Spacing:  

E. Two spaces after each sentence [watch for ! or ? that
do NOT end sentences, then use only one space]. F. One
blank line after each paragraph. [two cr/lf returns] [If you
can't do this easily, just separate each para with "**" to
simlate the "hard returns"] G. Two blank lines after each
section [wide paper breaks] H. Four blank lines after each
chapter I. Three blank lines after chapter headers. J. Elipses
[word. . .] have no spaces before or after ".'s" unless they
end a sentence with four [. . . . ] then it is a sentence
ending. . .with two spaces. . . . Next is a new sentence. K.
Dashes will be--dashes--with no extra spaces around them
[this has been discussed at great length and changed one
or two times already. I have heard great argumentations
from both sides [_I_ preferred the spaces] but I finally
decided on not having them because more people wanted it
that way and because it looked more like the books [also it
saves a few spaces here and there in the files].  

3. Try for 99.9 to 99.99% accuracy.  

4. Swap proofreading with others from the volunteers list,
keep your reading fresh. . .once you miss an error it is a
likely thing that you will miss it again.  

5. Poems and indented quotations within paragraphs: Please
try to make this look as much like the book so it can be
determined by the reader whether this is a separate part,
part of the same paragraph or what. Feel free to use indent
and blank lines to accomplish this.  

6. Most people use "quotes" but those who are sticklers for
``open'' and ``close'' quotes use these. Gets hairy if you
say:  

Harry said, ``'Twas the night before Christmas'' Harry said,
"'Twas the night before Christmas" is fine, [not to mention
that many keyboards and programs require an extra ` to get
one on the screen, so right now I have to type ```` to get
just `` on the screen. When a doubt occurs, just do what
you think the average searcher goes searching for. Please
include a note at the top of your files indicating any of
these you were unsure about.  

What we need most in proofreading are people to readjust
those margins after the hyphens have been removed, and to
adjust line lengths in the places where phrases, lines, and
paragraphs have widows and orphans.  

We try to average 65, with 55 to 75 being short and long
other than for emergencies, which will extend to 51 to 79.  

If this it NOT what you want to do, PLEASE don't let me
force you into such a thing. It is something I can do, and
can probably teach others to do, but I STRONGLY prefer
NOT to ask people to do slave labor. The editing of this
nature makes the Etexts much easier to read and search
with nearly any program and computer, which is a major
part of Project Gutenberg's goal. . .to get the books to
EVERYONE.  

I know that I have a particular talent for margination, that
comes out without apparent effort sometimes, as you might
notice in the message. That talent is probably the only
reason I ever decided this editing is possible, but I CAN tell
you that I can't do more than about 100 pages a day of it,
and that in eight separate shifts with rest in between.  

However, when I think of the millions or billions of people
who should be able to use these books only one decade
from now [after 22 years on the job] it is hard for me NOT
to do this editing, as I think Etext is going to be a much
better medium than paper ever was and should not be
relegated to "copying paper" inclusive of all the problems
paper might cause as a medium [even though we are used
to them]. Some scholars in the Etext and paper reprint field
even feel that typographical errors, along with hyphenation
and pagination, should be preserved.  

Etext as developed and distributed by Project Gutenberg
since 1971 was never intended to be a copy of a paper or a
parchment [remember, first Project Gutenberg Etext was
typed in from parchment replicas of the US Declaration of
Independence].  

The major puposes of Project Gutenberg have always been: 

1. to encourage the creation and distribution of electronic
texts for the general audience.  

2. to provide these Etexts in a manner available to everyone
in terms of price and accessibility [i.e. no special hardware
or software], and no price tag attached to the Etexts
themselves.  

3. to make the Etexts as readily usable as possible, with no
forms or other paperwork required, and as easily readable to
the human eyes as to computer programs, and in fact, more
readable than paper.  

4. to encourage the doubling of creation and distribution
every year, so as to put 10,000 Etexts into general
circulation by December 31 of the year 2001.  

For those of you who are not terribly interested in the
editing of the books into formats to improve onscreen
reading and searchin, you might want to stop here, as the
following pertains mostly to editing in this new methodology.
Hopefully, Etexts will allow us to exorcise the old, no longer
necessary methods the publishers have used to get more
words on to fewer pages, and to eliminate end of line
hyphenations, and also to reconnect many phrases and
sentences that were previously broken up in this same
process of moving away from manuscript form. Please also
realize that the examples below will look as if they orginally
had the ragged margination you see here, while a quick look
at the paper books will show you their marginations were
perfectly neat. This is part of the same process called
"proportional spacing" in which the publishers make an even
greater effort to adjust the words to their own formats-- a
process in which the letters are squeezed more closely
together, for the purpose of saving more paper, or
sometimes spread further apart to eliminate a particularly
awful phraseology or "widow/orphan" problem.  

Eventually authors will finally have control over their own
works, and will actually be able to create their books in
finished published form just the way they want them.  

For those books we already have in print and in Etext, we
hope to help create editions that are more readable, by
trying to a job of "reverse engineering" to arrive at a book
somewhat more resembling what authors intended in the
first place. Given the information authors have given us in
response to our questions about how the printed book
looked in a comparison to what they had intended, it is
HIGHLY UNLIKLEY that these efforts are going to be exactly
what the authors had in mind, but this should not keep us
from trying to move in that direction.  

New editing policy for margination/widows/orphans.  

Here is an example of an original paragraph from the
introduction to The House of Seven Gables, followed by two
possible revisions:  

As I received it after being edited and proofed several
times:  

In September of the year during the February of which
Hawthorne had completed "The Scarlet Letter," he began
"The House of the Seven Gables." Meanwhile, he had
removed from Salem to Lenox, in Berkshire County,
Massachusetts, where he occupied with his family a small
red wooden house, still standing at the date of this edition,
near the Stockbridge Bowl.  

The margins in that paragraph are very even, nearly perfect
as a matter of fact, with only the first line haveing 63
letters, and the rest having 62. However the title of the
book is done in such a manner as to leave two words on the
next line, which is NOT a real flaw, I am only doing this as
an example:  

Here is another margination of the same paragraph which I
have chosen as a rather extreme example, so you can easily
see what has been under discussion for so long.  

In September of the year during the February of which
Hawthorne had completed "The Scarlet Letter," he began
"The House of the Seven Gables." Meanwhile, he had
removed from Salem to Lenox, in Berkshire County,
Massachusetts, where he occupied with his family a small
red wooden house, still standing at the date of this edition,
near the Stockbridge Bowl.  

This margination is much more ragged, with an average of
about 70 characters per line, with the longest being 74 and
shortest of a length of 67. Thus, no line is longer than three
letters longer than 71, and no line is shorter than than
amount. This is pretty good aritmetically, probably better
than we will get on the average, in our average book.  

However, the point of all this effort was to get the phrases
a bit more cohesive, so that every line except one ended in
some punctuation mark, and made reasonable sense. Of
course, I was stumped by the long word Massachusetts,
and ended up with this word separating towns and county
on one line, and state on the next line. In a perfect world, I
could have rewritten all the material to get the same
meaning across, and with margins that were entirely
justified. . .but we all know that is beyond the scope of
what we are talking about. The books have to remain, and
should remain, the most accurate transcription of what any
author was trying to say, but we can improve the
publications, by doing a better job of editing, of
proofreading, and margins of course, as we have been
discussing.  

The point of all this is to try to eliminate widows or orphans
as they are called. . .cases in which one word is left on that
line, while the main clause, phrase, sentence, paragraph,
page or whatever is left above, or on the previous page.  

What we would LIKE to do, is to make Project Gutenberg
books a bit easier to read, and much easier for search
programs with a policy of editing that eliminates as much of
the hyphenations, paginations, and marginations of the
publishing process; leave a book that is not shredding the
words at the ends of lines so as to save one or two pages
at the end of the book. . .this is more valuable than you
might think to a publisher for whom the process could save
millions of pages per year, but it is going the way of the
dinosaur as publication is moving from paper to Etext
publications.  

Adding blank lines between paragraphs makes them a much
easier target for the human eye, and takes only one
character: while indentation takes from two to ten
characters in the Etexts our staff has already prepared.
Thus we can save space while eyes are given their just due,
words that are easy to read AND easy to see in their proper
phraseology.  

I admit that adding a blank space between sentences takes
up a bit more space, but it makes the sentences so much
easier when you are reading them. Of course, unless
indentation is slight AND there are lots of sentences per
paragraph, the whole thing comes out taking less space.  

This is something new, and we are still working on it;
example paragraphs such as the one above cannot
substitute for example books, such as the Edgar Rice
Burroughs Mars series which were recently posted, and the
Red Badge of Courage. Compare a book from the library to
the Project Gutenberg Edition and you will see just how
many changes we have made and how much better the
book reads. Of course, those who are inculcated to reading
in the publishers' styles to the maximum degree will feel less
of an improvement, simply because they have learned to
ignore all of the extra hassles created by publishers' styles,
which were developed to benefit the publishers, and not to
made the books more readable.  

The long section that used to be here, concering
remargination techniques, has been deleted for now. We are
experimenting on a new set of programs that remarginate,
and also help with any of a number of other aspects of
creating a more readable Etext for onscreen reading and
searching. If you do see any awkward margination, please
bring it to our attention, along with more normal kinds of
errors that should be corrected.  

Once again our many thanks to all the volunteers who have
done so much to help Project Gutenberg bring Etext to the
world.