Why are the paragraphs of a document often indented and not vertically separated?

A factor that has not been mentioned yet is the difference between material that is meant to be read vs. material that is written to be scanned. Narrative works such as novels and histories are written to be read. Thus they are formatted to facilitate the easy movement of the eye through the text. Putting a blank line between paragraphs would force the eye to jump from one paragraph to the next, slowing down the reader.

On the other hand, reference content, marketing content, and a lot of the content on the Web is not written read straight through, it is meant to be scanned. Even if marketing writers wish their readers would read straight through, they know very well that most don't. When a reader scans a text, the skip from point to point looking for something that they may be interested in. They will look at heading, call outs, bolded text, and the first lines of paragraphs, if the first lines are easy to pick out. Adding a full space between paragraph make it easier for the scanning reader to pick out the first lines of paragraphs.

Once people realized that this was how people were reading, they went a little nuts with the headings and bolding and callouts. (Some people still do way too much of this in their answers here.) Research shows that too much of this turns readers off. You can't scan a text that is a jumble of different shouty elements. That leaves spaces between paragraphs as an easy and inoffensive way to make content easier to scan.

posted about 7 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

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Up until recently the "correct" way to indicate the start of a new paragraph. It is what was taught at schools and preached by style guides. Esentially it is the default because it has been the default for a long time.

Now, either tend to be considered acceptable (although some insitutions or organisation may prefer a particular style) but indents are probably more popular.

Readability might have more to do with what you're used to and, to some extent the medium you're reading (electronic or print) and even the nature of the text.

I, for example, don't like whitespace in finction as I find it jarring and clinical and it brings me out of the story. But I grew up with indents as standard, so it might be that.

posted over 9 years ago

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Ashandes‭

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I've never heard this style called "academic". I don't know if you just made that phrase up or you heard it somewhere.

But since I was a wee lad in school 40 years ago, I've always been taught that there were two styles for writing a paragraph: "block style", where you put a blank line between paragraphs, and "indent style", where you indent the first line of each paragraph.

Which is better is pretty much a matter of taste. Indent style takes a little less room as it doesn't have all the blank lines, which is good if you want to make what you've written look shorter and bad if you want to make it look longer. I suppose one could argue that indent style eliminates an ambiguity when a paragraph happens to begin on a new a page. Is that a continuation of the paragraph from the preceding page or a new paragraph?

posted over 9 years ago

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Jay‭

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It's not related to academic vs non-academic styles, but a mere matter of proper typography and cost-effectiveness.

Butterick's Practical Typography offers the generally accepted rule:

A first-line in­dent is the most com­mon way to sig­nal the start of a new para­graph. The other com­mon way is with space be­tween para­graphs.

First-line in­dents and space between paragraphs have the same re­la­tion­ship as belts and sus­penders. You only need one to get the job done. Us­ing both is a mis­take. If you use a first-line in­dent on a para­graph, don’t use space be­tween. And vice versa.

As to cost-effectiveness, space between paragraphs is most common on the web because it's the easy to do using CSS. First-line indent is most common in print because you save paper. Books and journals get printed; that's probably all there is to it IMHO.

posted over 9 years ago

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Denis de Bernardy‭

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I just pulled a random selection of books off my shelf, US and European publishers, and almost all use indented paragraphs, although I am told that this is less common in Germany. Apart from the savings mentioned above, in print it is the only clear way to distinguish a paragraph, short of using something like drop letters. Think of a sentence that ends at the end of a line and is also the last on a page. The next sentence, which is in the same paragraph, will start at the top of the next page. If you mark paragraphs simply by using extra vertical spacing, you have no way of knowing whether this sentence is the same paragraph or not. A common convention is also to not indent paragraphs that immediately follow a heading, as the heading itself is sufficient to indicate that what follows is a new paragraph. It goes without saying, I would hope, that the heading should be on the same page as the following paragraph.

Unfortunately, word processors such as Word do not automatically recognise the first paragraph after a heading as in any way special, and most people are ignorant of basic conventions and word processor styles. You need to use specialist type-setting tools, such as TeX, to get the effect needed, or be prepared to fine tune after all writing is finished (which you should do anyway, but few bother).

posted about 7 years ago

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Keith Collyer‭

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