Guides/Feature Workflows

Print-Ready Check

Catch and fix the page-layout flaws that make a book look self-published

What Print-Ready Check does ↓What each finding means ↓The one-click fixes ↓Why the fixes are print-only ↓The hyphenation-exception word list ↓

What Print-Ready Check does

Print-Ready Check finds the small typographic flaws that quietly signal a self-published book — a single line stranded at the top of a page, a stack of hyphens marching down the right edge, a line that runs past the text area into the binding gutter. It's under Print-Ready Check in the Style section.

What sets it apart from a checklist is that it works on your real book. When you run it, Bookshaper compiles the actual print PDF through the same export pipeline you'll publish with, then walks the compiled layout page by page and lists every defect it finds. The preview beside the list shows the exact PDF the findings were measured against — click any finding and the preview jumps to that page.

Run analysis on the finished, styled manuscript. Print-Ready Check measures the compiled print PDF, so its findings reflect your current template, trim size, and fonts — change any of those and re-run.

What each finding means

Print-Ready Check groups findings by kind. In plain language:

Widow: The last line of a paragraph sits alone at the top of a page, cut off from the rest of the paragraph on the previous page — a classic sign of loose typesetting.
Orphan: The first line of a paragraph sits alone at the bottom of a page, separated from the rest of the paragraph that continues overleaf.
Hyphen ladder: Three or more consecutive lines end with a hyphen, drawing a distracting “ladder” down the right edge of the text.
Short last line: A paragraph ends in a very short last line — a “runt” — leaving a visually ragged gap at the bottom of the paragraph.
Overflow: A line extends past the text area, into the gutter on the binding side. Print services reject this. If it's an unbreakable verse or preserved line wider than the trim, there's no safe automatic fix — shorten the line or reduce its size.
Short page: The page ends well above the bottom margin because a keep-together block (one that shouldn't split across pages) was pushed whole onto the next page.

The one-click fixes

Each finding offers the fixes that make sense for it. All of them are surgical — they act on the single paragraph in question, and they re-flow it just enough to clear the defect.

Tighten: Slightly tightens letter spacing in the paragraph so it re-wraps one line shorter. Click again to tighten further.
Loosen: Slightly loosens letter spacing so the paragraph re-wraps one line longer. Click again to loosen further.
No hyphens: Turns hyphenation off for the paragraph — the fix for a hyphen ladder.
Allow break: Relaxes the widow/orphan (or keep-together) rule for the paragraph so the page can break through it naturally — the fix for a widow, orphan, or short page.

Why the fixes are print-only

Widows, orphans, and hyphen ladders are properties of a fixed page. An ebook has no fixed pages — the reader's device reflows the text to their screen and font size, so there's no page for a line to be stranded on. Applying a letter-spacing tweak or a hyphenation change to the ebook would be meaningless at best and harmful at worst.

So every Print-Ready Check fix is scoped to the print output only. Your EPUB keeps flowing naturally and is never touched. This is the whole point: you tune the printed page to look typeset without compromising the reflowable ebook readers get on their Kindle or phone.

After applying fixes, re-run Print-Ready Check. The resolved counts confirm each fix landed — and occasionally a fix on one paragraph shifts the page enough to surface or clear something further down, so a second pass is worth it before you export.

The hyphenation-exception word list

Some words should never be hyphenated — a character or place name, a brand, a coined term. At the bottom of the Print-Ready Check panel is a collapsible Hyphenation exceptions manager: type a word, click Add, and the typesetter keeps it whole everywhere it appears in print. Names and technical terms are the usual candidates. This clears the hyphen ladders those words would otherwise cause at the source, rather than turning off hyphenation paragraph by paragraph.

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