[Next project] Romance by Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford

[Szymon Szott]

Hi!

Having slowly recovered from my previous four-volume production, I’d now like to tackle the next missing book from Conrad’s bibliography which is another collab with Ford Maddox Ford:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17642
https://archive.org/details/romancenovelbyjo0000illu/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_(novel)
https://github.com/SzymonSzott/joseph-conrad_ford-madox-ford_romance

Best,
Szymon

[Alex Cabal]

OK, Lukas will manage with Robin reviewing.

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[Szymon Szott]

Lukas, I have a question on language semantics. On one of my previous productions, I received the following remark from an editor:

"Savoir vivre only appears in the unabridged dictionary and hence still needs italics. You can tell if the word is from the unabridged dictionary by scrolling to the bottom to see if you see the box that says "The Ultimate Dictionary Awaits / Expand your vocabulary and dive deeper into language with Merriam-Webster Unabridged."

In my current book, the phrase caballero appears a lot and it's originally italicized. I found it in M-W Unabridged: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/caballero

But a quick search of SE repositories indicates that no one (including me on previous productions) is italicizing it: https://github.com/search?q=org%3Astandardebooks+caballero&type=code

What's the correct way?

[Lukas Bystricky]

Long story short, italics on savoir vivre, but not on caballero is correct. 

Searching "caballero" and scrolling to the bottom you'll see:

This is on the bottom of every definition, including those in the abridged dictionary.

If you search "savoir vivre" on MW and scroll down to the bottom you'll see:

This means that it's not in the abridged MW and hence needs italics (if it's indeed a foreign word). 

I wish there was a better way to tell from the website, especially since this does seem like something that could change in the future without warning, but for now that's the easiest way I know to tell if a word is in the abridged dictionary or not. Another way is to use the free MW phone app. The app only shows words in the abridged dictionary. For example it doesn't give any results for "savoir vivre." 

[Szymon Szott]

Thanks Lukas! Those side-by-side screenshots were particularly helpful!

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[Szymon Szott]

Lukas, one more small question regarding a single italicized sentence that uses two languages:

<p>“<i>Votre père dort sans doute, Señorita</i>.”</p>

Have I applied semantics correctly?

<p>“<i xml:lang="fr">Votre père dort sans doute,</i> <i xml:lang="es">Señorita.</i>”</p>

[Lukas Bystricky]

I would say the whole thing can go inside the French tags. Señorita is in MW, so if it's outside the French tag it wouldn't get italics at all. 

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[Szymon Szott]

Right, thanks! I totally forgot about that aspect! :)

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[Szymon Szott]

Lukas, I have one more corner case (Castro is a surname):

<p>“He is civil to me. <i>Amigo Castro</i> here, and <i>Amigo Castro</i> there. [...]

I've removed italics from 'amigo' elsewhere (because it's in M-W) but I'm not sure if I should leave the italics here (adding language semantics) or perhaps remove italics but add single quotes (as an [Editorial] commit)?

[Lukas Bystricky]

I think replacing the italics with quotes is the best option.

[Szymon Szott]

Thanks, Lukas for all the previous replies! On page 192 there's this tricky text in Latin:
https://archive.org/details/romancenovelbyjo0000illu/page/193/mode/1up

Have I correctly fixed the punctuation in this commit?

[Alex Cabal]

Looks good

> Have I correctly fixed the punctuation in this commit <https://
> github.com/SzymonSzott/joseph-conrad_ford-madox-ford_romance/commit/
> bb6182b16df28241b55b528d71ab1af99f35bdab>?

>
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[Szymon Szott]

Thanks Alex! Having resolved the 500 <i> tags and all lint errors, I can finally move on to proofreading! :-)

[Szymon Szott]

Lukas, 

this book uses a three em-dash (instead of a horizontal ellipsis) to introduce interruption in dialog (of the trailing off kind), as in the last sentence at the bottom of this page:

https://archive.org/details/romancenovelbyjo0000illu/page/12/mode/1up

So I changed that to a (single) em-dash (as per SEMoS 8.7.7.8.2) 

https://github.com/SzymonSzott/joseph-conrad_ford-madox-ford_romance/blob/581d0ff9d7f17d375599f4624078d4821bbccfe1/src/epub/text/chapter-1-2.xhtml#L27

But now I see typogrify removes the trailing space (as per SEMoS 8.7.7.1).

Since there are many such examples throughout the text, I wanted to double-check: is typogrify correct?

Best,

Szymon

[Lukas Bystricky]

What makes you think typogrify might be wrong here? Just applying the rules you cited means that there should be no trailing whitespace there. 

[Szymon Szott]

Thanks! I thought maybe this might be a new corner case as I hadn't previously seen that use of an em-dash and some part of me wanted to "defend" that whitespace ;-)

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[Szymon Szott]

Lukas, 

I found this cover in the DB to be appropriate because there's a specific and pivotal scene taking place in a harbor (and also, Friedrich is usually a good match for Conrad):

https://standardebooks.org/artworks/caspar-david-friedrich/view-of-a-harbour

Here's a mockup: https://ibb.co/fd5q6SJW 

Is this OK?

S.

[Lukas Bystricky]

Looks good to me. I've assigned it in the DB. 

Just out of curiosity, have you tried other crops? This one sort of hides the bottom of two close ships. It might be better to move it down slightly to get the hulls to show up, at the expense of cutting off more of the masts. Or maybe is there any way to get the row boat to show up for instance? You would have to crop out the a lot of the two big close ships, but maybe you could keep one of the ones in the distance. 

[Szymon Szott]

Yes, having the row boat would be nice; is this crop better?
https://ibb.co/qL03rw0K

Any more to the right and we start seeing elements of the right ship.

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[Lukas Bystricky]

I prefer that crop, but I'll leave the final decision to you.

[Szymon Szott]

Thanks, Lukas! All done.

Robin, the repo is ready for review:
https://github.com/SzymonSzott/joseph-conrad_ford-madox-ford_romance

[Robin Whittleton]

Thanks, give me 48hrs as per usual.

-Robin

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[Robin Whittleton]

Filed a handful of small issues at https://github.com/SzymonSzott/joseph-conrad_ford-madox-ford_romance/issues/1.

On 26 Jan 2026, at 22:07, Szymon Szott <szymon...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Robin Whittleton]

Over to you Alex.

-Robin

On 27 Jan 2026, at 08:32, Robin Whittleton <ro...@reala.net> wrote:

Filed a handful of small issues at https://github.com/SzymonSzott/joseph-conrad_ford-madox-ford_romance/issues/1.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/A8DEF597-9DA2-492C-87F9-F25AA480137D%40reala.net.

[Alex Cabal]

Looks good, I've gone ahead and released it! Thanks!

You've kept up a pretty good pace with Conrad, do you plan on finishing
them all?

On 1/27/26 7:36 AM, Robin Whittleton wrote:
> Over to you Alex.
>
> -Robin
>
>> On 27 Jan 2026, at 08:32, Robin Whittleton <ro...@reala.net> wrote:
>>
>> Filed a handful of small issues at https://github.com/SzymonSzott/

>> joseph-conrad_ford-madox-ford_romance/issues/1 <https://github.com/
>> SzymonSzott/joseph-conrad_ford-madox-ford_romance/issues/1>.

>>
>>> On 26 Jan 2026, at 22:07, Szymon Szott <szymon...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks, Lukas! All done.
>>>
>>> Robin, the repo is ready for review:
>>> https://github.com/SzymonSzott/joseph-conrad_ford-madox-ford_romance
>>> <https://github.com/SzymonSzott/joseph-conrad_ford-madox-ford_romance>
>>>
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[Szymon Szott]

Thanks Alex, both for the release and the final touches!

This has been my 10th book for SE and my 8th Conrad. I do indeed plan to finish all of his books (if I get the chance). Here are the outstanding ones:

- Chance
- The Arrow of Gold
- The Rescue [this one's in production by Steven]
- The Nature of a Crime (w/ Ford)
- The Rover
- Suspense

Then, as a coup de grâce, I'd like to tackle the short fiction ;-)

So, I'll take a short break and I'll most likely come back with a new thread for 'Chance'. 

Best,

Szymon