Quote:
Originally Posted by DMSmillie
The first is objective and observable, the second is entirely subjective and a matter of personal preference.
It's true that the convention in book formatting is to indent the first line of a paragraph (except when it's the first paragraph following a chapter or section heading) and have no space between paragraphs. But that's just a convention - something which most likely came into being through a desire on the part of publishers and printers to minimize the number of pages required to print a book and as a result minimize the cost of printing a book. We've all simply become used to it when reading printed books. I respect the fact that you think it looks better like that, but I don't agree that that automatically means it look better to everyone.
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Thing is, I've seen polls in the past on how an eBook looks best and most people have replying with indents and no paragraph spacing. So if you want to possibly please most of your intended audience, that's the format you should use. The problem is that the paragraph spaces take you away from the book. The section breaks do the same thing but when you know you are going into a different section, you know that and you are OK.
Now, you could offer two differently formatted versions to please even more people. But most eBooks that come formatted with paragraph spaces also have other formatting issues overall that also are annoying. A lot have wide margins and a small text size instead of the default text size. And to me, having proper paragraphs with indents and no paragraph spaces keeps me in the book. The blank lines are a distraction.