Preview

Every page, laid out by the same engine that writes the PDF. What you approve here is what the printer receives.

Reading device

Device	What it shows
Printed book	Paper at its trim size
Kindle Paperwhite	An e-ink panel, pages turned sideways — set its text size to Largest to see the tightest measure a reader can ask for
Tablet
Phone
Browser window

Paper shows what the PDF will be. The others show what the EPUB will be, which is a different question: no trim size, no margins of yours, and the reader’s own type size.

Arrangement

On paper you choose how pages are shown:

Arrangement	For
Scroll the stack	Reading through quickly
One page at a time	Checking a single page
Facing pages	Checking a spread — how the book actually opens

Use facing pages before you export. A chapter opening that falls on a left-hand page, a picture that lands opposite the wrong text, a blank verso you did not expect — none of these are visible one page at a time.

Reader’s text size

On a Kindle, the plus and minus in the toolbar are the reader’s own text buttons — Smaller text and Larger text — stepping through five sizes with the book’s own in the middle. There is no zoom on a device: a reader cannot magnify a Kindle, only change its type, and that is what re-breaks the lines and moves the chapter openings you are checking.

Moving through the book

The middle of the toolbar says where you are — the chapter, and on paper the page over the page count. Press it to go somewhere else: type a page number, or a few letters of a chapter’s title, and press Enter. ⌘G opens it from anywhere on the screen.

Every page of the book, small, runs down the right-hand side. The page you are on is framed, a chapter’s first page carries its name, and a click on any of them goes there. Put the strip away with Hide the pages when the window is narrow.

Key	Does
→ ←, Page Down Page Up	Next and previous page
Home End	First and last page
⌘G	Go to a page or a chapter

Scrolling over one page at a time or facing pages turns the page. Zoom in and out, or press the percentage to fit the page to the window.

About this page

The info button opens a panel of facts about what you are looking at:

Row	Says
Reading on	The device
Trim	The page size
Margins	The four values
Body	Typeface and size
Extent	The page count — or “Reflowable” on a device, where there is none
Design	Whether the design is saved with the book or came from a theme

What to look for

Before exporting, page through and check:

1. Chapter openings on the right-hand page — the convention for a bound book, and the setting is in Formatting→Chapter openings
2. Widows and orphans — a single line stranded at the top or bottom of a page
3. Pictures that pushed text into an awkward break, or landed a page away from what they illustrate
4. Blank pages you did not expect — usually a chapter forced to a recto
5. The last page of the book — a chapter ending one line onto a new page reads as a mistake

Items 1, 2 and 4 are controlled in pagination.