Should I indent the first line of the first paragraph in a chapter?
I was reading a thesis report of a friend and I noticed that he didn't indent the first line of the first paragraph in each chapter. I don't remember noticing it anywhere before until I saw it there and I have some OCD issues with reformatting the documents/reports and make them look awesome.
So I would like to know, if I'm going to write a new document/report that is divided in chapters and paragraphs, what kind of indentation should I prefer? Should I indent all the first lines of the paragraphs regarding if it's the first in a chapter or not and why one method is better than the other?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/3152. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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I read somewhere that if you are double spacing between paragraphs, no indent was needed. But if you were single spacing, an indent was needed to show a new paragraph was starting. That is the "rule" I follow.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8016. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Generally speaking, ask the person or people to whom you are submitting how s/he/they want the document formatted.
Barring that, I have seen the first line indented and subsequent paragraphs not indented, but not the reverse. It would look like a mistake to me.
I would either indent everything or not indent anything. If you're not indenting, use a double space between paragraphs.
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