Amazon recently updated the Kindle for PC app, and alas two bugs have appeared. The first is that the app no longer defaults to justifying body text as it did before, regardless of how you code your book. Previously, if one left the text-align value out of the relevant CSS, or if you coded in “text-align:justify;”, the app would justify the text; now everything displays aligned left and you get the jagged right margin.

I have informed Amazon of the bug, and they have responded that the technicians are now working on it, so perhaps we will see a correction with the next update. In the interim, if you are testing your book in Kindle for PC, know that the bug is there and it isn’t your coding.

The second bug is that the app is failing to display italics correctly; specifically, at certain font sizes the app is adding additional space before and after italicized text (see image below). It is random, with italics displaying properly on one line and on the next not. When I informed Amazon of the bug, their initial response was that this was simply a function of the auto-spacing between words that normally occurs, but when I pointed out that the app should not be adding a space between italicized text and following punctuation (in this case the semi-colon), they agreed to look into it. This problem first became apparent while testing a friend’s book, when a space suddenly appeared between the text and the period ending the sentence, then disappeared when we changed the font size. At first we just thought it was a glitch, but now realize it is a bug.