Then ‘real’ m-dashes are converted to ‘–’, per the Project Gutenberg standard.

I get over 70,000 unique visitors a month, and no one has complained about these practices yet.

Besides, smart quotes are not ANSI standard – they’re a Micro$oft aberration, so the less we see of them, the better.

ANSI text is the simplest and most universal form an ebook can take, and is compatible with just about every platform and gadget out there. I don’t believe it will ever be displaced as the format of preference for fiction ebooks. Non-fiction, of course, is another matter.

One of the first things I do on any wordprocessor (I’m a freelance writer so I normally keep at least half a dozen installed) is turn off smart quotes.

They look great on a properly formatted book– just wonderful. But they look so terrible when they’re messed up that I avoid using them most of the time because they’re such a pain to deal with when you’re changing dialog around.

That being the case, I don’t worry too much if they aren’t there in something I read.

People care? Seriously?

Yes.

If I’m doing anything with the coding of a book, I take the smart quotes out. It’s first on the list. Dashes, eh, I don’t really care about. But smart quotes tend to annoy me.

As a basis for recommending a book or not, smart quotes are not even a consideration.

But it would not count the slightest tittle in recommending a book or ebook to another. For that, content is my exclusive consideration.

I also cringe at the way some younger people write today. Perhaps that’s a by-product of not caring about the presentation as much?

I’ve also read professionally edited & formatted books and while they look better, the story is the same whether it’s in arial font or courier.

I’m not saying that authors/editors shouldn’t produce good looking (e)books, just that it won’t sway me when deciding if I like a book or not. I can understand how people feel differently, though.

To me, the message/story/article is what’s most important, not so much how it’s presented.

I do prefer real dashes and indented paragraphs (if the paragraphs don’t indent I feel like I’m reading a webpage), but again, it’s not really important.

But when creating ebooks I always use smart quotes and en or em dashes. Small touches make a lot of difference. I also prefer to create ebooks that don’t indent the first paragraph of a chapter, that have a page break before chapter headings, that have a good table of contents (at the back!) And possibly also include some minor graphical niceties, perhaps in section breaks. And even, perhaps, do something special for the first character/ first words of each chapter.

Most readers will no consciously notice these items. But they do contribute to an overall impression of quality.