[First Project] Living Alone by Stella Benson

[Magnus Medin]

Hi,

I'd like to work on Living Alone by Stella Benson (which is on the list of wanted ebooks) as my first project.

Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14907

Scans: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012352152

Thanks!

[Alex Cabal]

Great, that one would be a good start.

This book has a preface, acknowledgements, and a poem epigraph, so
you'll add a half title page after the epigraph. Otherwise this will be
pretty straight forward.

Make sure to read the Standard Ebooks Manual of Style before starting,
as you won't know what to fix if you haven't read the standards. In
particular, please closely review the semantics, high level patterns,
and typography sections:

https://standardebooks.org/manual

https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/4-semantics

https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/7-high-level-structural-patterns

https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/8-typography

The step by step guide will take you from start to finish. Please follow
it exactly:

https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-step-by-step

This page on common issues in older books may be useful:

https://standardebooks.org/contribute/how-tos/common-issues-when-working-on-public-domain-ebooks

Please email often if you have any questions at all. Our standards are
well-established so there is probably already a standard for formatting
whatever problem you've encountered.

When you're ready, email back with a link to your Github repository so
that I can assign you a manager and reviewer.

Have fun! :)

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[Magnus Medin]

Thanks for the advice. I have read through the manual and created a GitHub repo with an initial commit as per the guide. It should be accessible at https://github.com/magnusmedin/stella-benson_living-alone.

[Alex Cabal]

OK, Vince will manage with Robin reviewing.

On 6/26/26 10:31 AM, 'Magnus Medin' via Standard Ebooks wrote:
> Thanks for the advice. I have read through the manual and created a
> GitHub repo with an initial commit as per the guide. It should be
> accessible at https://github.com/magnusmedin/stella-benson_living-alone.
>
> torsdag 25 juni 2026 kl. 19:06:22 UTC+2 skrev Alex Cabal:
>
> Great, that one would be a good start.
>
> This book has a preface, acknowledgements, and a poem epigraph, so
> you'll add a half title page after the epigraph. Otherwise this will be
> pretty straight forward.
>
> Make sure to read the Standard Ebooks Manual of Style before starting,
> as you won't know what to fix if you haven't read the standards. In
> particular, please closely review the semantics, high level patterns,
> and typography sections:
>
> https://standardebooks.org/manual <https://standardebooks.org/manual>
>

> https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/4-semantics <https://
> standardebooks.org/manual/latest/4-semantics>
>
> https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/7-high-level-structural-
> patterns <https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/7-high-level-
> structural-patterns>
>
> https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/8-typography <https://
> standardebooks.org/manual/latest/8-typography>

>
> The step by step guide will take you from start to finish. Please
> follow
> it exactly:
>
> https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-step-by-

> step <https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-step-
> by-step>

>
> This page on common issues in older books may be useful:
>
> https://standardebooks.org/contribute/how-tos/common-issues-when-

> working-on-public-domain-ebooks <https://standardebooks.org/
> contribute/how-tos/common-issues-when-working-on-public-domain-ebooks>

>
> Please email often if you have any questions at all. Our standards are
> well-established so there is probably already a standard for formatting
> whatever problem you've encountered.
>
> When you're ready, email back with a link to your Github repository so
> that I can assign you a manager and reviewer.
>
> Have fun! :)
>
>
> On 6/25/26 5:01 AM, Magnus Medin wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'd like to work on Living Alone by Stella Benson (which is on
> the list
> > of wanted ebooks) as my first project.
> >
> > Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14907
> <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14907>
> > Scans: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012352152
> <https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012352152>
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> > Groups "Standard Ebooks" group.
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
> send
> > an email to standardebook...@googlegroups.com
> > <mailto:standardebook...@googlegroups.com>.
> > To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/

> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/>
> >
> standardebooks/7879a802-4e0b-428e-8ace-5868de6fd5e3n%40googlegroups.com <http://40googlegroups.com>
> > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ <https://groups.google.com/d/
> msgid/>
> >
> standardebooks/7879a802-4e0b-428e-8ace-5868de6fd5e3n%40googlegroups.com <http://40googlegroups.com>?
> > utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

>
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[Magnus Medin]

I am currently on step 9/10 and there are some things in the guide I am a bit unsure of.

It says under step 9 that you are supposed to format the work according to the typography section in the manual, but the typography section also includes a lot of things that are handled in other later steps in the guide (e.g. British to American quotation). Am I correct in assuming that it is enough to go through the listed common issues under the typography checklist, proceed with the other steps and then at the end ensure the production is formatted according to the entirety of the typography section?

When it comes to commit messages, is it important to adhere to the listed commit messages? It seemed logical to me to, for example, split up the elision and commas sections of step 9 into separate commits. I could either squash them or make an empty commit with the listed message if desired, but it seems more logical to me to simply have them as separate commits.

[randbr...@gmail.com]

I was the one who requested that Living Alone be added to the list, so I'm gratified to see that it was picked up so quickly!

[Alex Cabal]

On 7/6/26 4:41 AM, 'Magnus Medin' via Standard Ebooks wrote:
> It says under step 9 that you are supposed to format the work according
> to the typography section in the manual, but the typography section also
> includes a lot of things that are handled in other later steps in the
> guide (e.g. British to American quotation). Am I correct in assuming
> that it is enough to go through the listed common issues under the
> typography checklist, proceed with the other steps and then at the end
> ensure the production is formatted according to the entirety of the
> typography section?

Yes, correct

>
> When it comes to commit messages, is it important to adhere to the
> listed commit messages? It seemed logical to me to, for example, split
> up the elision and commas sections of step 9 into separate commits. I
> could either squash them or make an empty commit with the listed message
> if desired, but it seems more logical to me to simply have them as
> separate commits.

Yes, for your first ebook you should follow the guide exactly including
commit messages. This is to familiarize yourself with the process and to
make it easier for your reviewer. Of course a particular ebook may
require additional commits depending on what's going on in the ebook.
You should not have any empty commits, that doesn't make sense.

[Magnus Medin]

Okay, I have squashed the two typography commits so it should adhere to the guide.

I am now working on adding semantics, and I am not entirely sure of when to use <em> as opposed to <i>. Is <em> only used in speech or is it suitable in all places where a piece of text is emphasised? I am specifically thinking of the italicized "morale" at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012352152&seq=160&q1=morale and the italicized quotes in the epigraph (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012352152&seq=15. 

Italicized all-caps are used at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012352152&seq=135&q1=true,just,kind. Should <em> or <strong> be used here? <em> seems more suitable to me, but <strong> is arguably closer to the scans.

Another thing I am unsure of is "protidgy" (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012352152&seq=184&q1=protidgy), the fact that it is italicized makes me question whether it is intentional or simply a typo of prodigy. The word does not appear anywhere else in the novel (or anywhere else from what I can gather other than when it is a typo) which makes me lean towards the latter, but I am not sure.

Lastly, what type attribute should I use when it is not clear what type of publication something is? Is it fine to just use the broad "se:name.publication" or does it always have to be one of the "leaf" attributes? I am for example thinking of "I Wonder" at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012352152&seq=59&q1=I+Wonder.

[Vince]

On Jul 12, 2026, at 3:17 PM, 'Magnus Medin' via Standard Ebooks <standar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Okay, I have squashed the two typography commits so it should adhere to the guide.

I am now working on adding semantics, and I am not entirely sure of when to use <em> as opposed to <i>. Is <em> only used in speech or is it suitable in all places where a piece of text is emphasised? I am specifically thinking of the italicized "morale" at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012352152&seq=160&q1=morale and the italicized quotes in the epigraph (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012352152&seq=15. 

In the first instance, that looks to me like italicization for a non-English word. Since morale is in M-W, then we would not italicize it, SEMoS 8.2.9.4.

In the second (the epigraph), only the quotes are italicized, which looks to me like instances of 8.2.1 rather than emphasis, and I think I would remove the italics there.

Italicized all-caps are used at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012352152&seq=135&q1=true,just,kind. Should <em> or <strong> be used here? <em> seems more suitable to me, but <strong> is arguably closer to the scans.

You can use both, e.g. <em><strong>word</strong></em>.

Another thing I am unsure of is "protidgy" (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012352152&seq=184&q1=protidgy), the fact that it is italicized makes me question whether it is intentional or simply a typo of prodigy. The word does not appear anywhere else in the novel (or anywhere else from what I can gather other than when it is a typo) which makes me lean towards the latter, but I am not sure.

Does the dragon mispronounce (or misspell) anything else? PG left it; I don’t know if that tells us anything or not. I could go either way, but I would be inclined to leave it.

Lastly, what type attribute should I use when it is not clear what type of publication something is? Is it fine to just use the broad "se:name.publication" or does it always have to be one of the "leaf" attributes? I am for example thinking of "I Wonder" at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012352152&seq=59&q1=I+Wonder.

It says elsewheree in the book that “Mr. Darnby Frere was the editor of an advanced religious paper called I Wonder…”

[Magnus Medin]

Thanks, this all seems reasonable to me.

> Does the dragon mispronounce (or misspell) anything else? PG left it; I don’t know if that tells us anything or not. I could go either way, but I would be inclined to leave it.

From what I can see no, although I admittedly did not look very thoroughly. But thinking about it more it seems odd to me that "prodigy" would be emphasised if that was the intended word, which makes me lean towards leaving it as well. I assume it should be just be kept within an <i> tag without any attribute as per 8.2.10.1 then? 

[Vince Rice]

No,I think it’s definitely being emphasized, so it would be em.

On Jul 13, 2026, at 6:54 AM, 'Magnus Medin' via Standard Ebooks <standar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Thanks, this all seems reasonable to me.

[Magnus Medin]

There is a prospectus in the book, and while I assume it is supposed to be a <blockquote>, I am not sure of what epub:type attribute to use since none of them seem directly applicable. Is z3998:letter suitable, or should I simply not have an epub:type attribute? In the scans it seems rather simple formatting wise, as far as I can tell the only difference is that it uses a smaller font size.

[Vince]

It would be just a plain blockquote, leave the font size as is. (Using a smaller font size for blockquotes was (is?) a common thing, but we don’t reduce it for accessibility reasons.)

[Magnus Medin]

I have made two changes which I marked as [Editorial], although I'm not sure if they should be marked as such. The first one was the addition of quotation marks to indicate elision ("what dyou think Sherry’s come too. Im an me as gone off to a place e knows" -> "what d’you think Sherry’s come too. ’Im an’ me ’as gone off to a place ’e knows") to match the rest of the book. Secondly, I added of a left double quotation mark where it was missing (to the left of the "You'll").  Was I correct in marking these as editorial, or are they an instance of "Fixing obvious, indisputable printer’s typos"?

I believe the only thing I have left at this point before proofreading, other than potentially changing these commit message, is changing a lot of the capitalization to be lowercase. This will probably be a rather big change since there is a lot of capitalization that does, as far as I can tell, not conform to the semos. I am consequently wondering whether it'd make sense to, for example, start with one or two chapters, get those changes reviewed and then do the rest after that?  There are notably a lot of cases where words such as "mayor", "dog" ("Dog David") and "army" are used as proper names(?), and I'm not sure of when, if ever, I should make them lowercase or keep them as is.

[Vince]

I gave up trying to figure out what that means, so I operate under the same rules as always: if it changes the text, it’s editorial.

Sure, you can do a couple of chapters and we’ll see, although I don’t know how much help I’m going to be; I had one of these a few years ago and I never did finish it over this exact issue. For whatever reason, I have a hard time distinguishing between what is OK and what isn’t. I suspect it was just from reading it and being “in” it so long; maybe it will be easier if I haven’t spent any time reading the book.

[Magnus Medin]

Great, thanks! I've pushed a commit for chapters 1‒3 and the acknowledgments now, and I'm frankly not at all confident in the changes I've made so any guidance is helpful. I tried to, as some kind of general rule, keep capitalization where the word was clearly referring to one specific entity, although there were cases where I ignored this rule because it felt odd (e.g. for "City" and "Tube"). In other words it was largely just based on feeling.

I am almost starting to wonder if the capitalization in the original text is in fact fine. But there are also some cases where it, at least to me, feels very wrong, such as for "Chairmen" and "Modern" in the commit.

[Alex Cabal]

"the City" in ref to London should be capitalized, it is a
"neighborhood" of London proper. Likewise the London Tube is also
capitalized.

On 7/21/26 2:34 PM, 'Magnus Medin' via Standard Ebooks wrote:
> Great, thanks! I've pushed a commit <https://github.com/magnusmedin/
> stella-benson_living-alone/
> commit/50e40d13ffca40ad9aa1e158c6fce99463496054> for chapters 1‒3 and

>> left of the "You'll <https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?
>> id=mdp.39015012352152&seq=262&q1=you>").  Was I correct in marking

>> these as editorial, or are they an instance of "Fixing obvious,
>> indisputable printer’s typos"?
>>
>> I believe the only thing I have left at this point before
>> proofreading, other than potentially changing these commit
>> message, is changing a lot of the capitalization to be lowercase.
>> This will probably be a rather big change since there is a lot of
>> capitalization that does, as far as I can tell, not conform to the
>> semos. I am consequently wondering whether it'd make sense to, for
>> example, start with one or two chapters, get those changes
>> reviewed and then do the rest after that?  There are notably a lot
>> of cases where words such as "mayor", "dog" ("Dog David") and
>> "army" are used as proper names(?), and I'm not sure of when, if
>> ever, I should make them lowercase or keep them as is.
>

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[Magnus Medin]

Okay, that makes sense now that you say it, thanks. Should I squash future commits relating to this unit of work or is it better to keep the iterations as separate commits? If the latter, is it fine to just repeat the same commit message? 

[Alex Cabal]

Commit hygenie is largely a matter of taste. If it's a single unit of
work like "change capitalization" then it can all be in one commit, it
doesn't make sense to have 10 different commits that are all the same
thing for different chapters. The important thing is not to mix up units
of work, like also including spelling or pretty-printing changes in
"change capitalization"

On 7/21/26 2:45 PM, 'Magnus Medin' via Standard Ebooks wrote:
> Okay, that makes sense now that you say it, thanks. Should I squash
> future commits relating to this unit of work or is it better to keep the
> iterations as separate commits? If the latter, is it fine to just repeat
> the same commit message?
>
> On Tuesday, 21 July 2026 at 21:35:59 UTC+2 Alex Cabal wrote:
>
> "the City" in ref to London should be capitalized, it is a
> "neighborhood" of London proper. Likewise the London Tube is also
> capitalized.
>
> On 7/21/26 2:34 PM, 'Magnus Medin' via Standard Ebooks wrote:
> > Great, thanks! I've pushed a commit <https://github.com/

> magnusmedin/ <https://github.com/magnusmedin/>

> <https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt>?

> >> id=mdp.39015012352152&seq=262&q1=you>").  Was I correct in marking
> >> these as editorial, or are they an instance of "Fixing obvious,
> >> indisputable printer’s typos"?
> >>
> >> I believe the only thing I have left at this point before
> >> proofreading, other than potentially changing these commit
> >> message, is changing a lot of the capitalization to be lowercase.
> >> This will probably be a rather big change since there is a lot of
> >> capitalization that does, as far as I can tell, not conform to the
> >> semos. I am consequently wondering whether it'd make sense to, for
> >> example, start with one or two chapters, get those changes
> >> reviewed and then do the rest after that?  There are notably a lot
> >> of cases where words such as "mayor", "dog" ("Dog David") and
> >> "army" are used as proper names(?), and I'm not sure of when, if
> >> ever, I should make them lowercase or keep them as is.
> >
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