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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30360
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30360
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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.

Original score: 4