[Jim Aikin]

I have a novel (that is, I've written a novel) that needs blank lines in the middle of chapters (to set off short notes that the characters are writing to one another). Exporting the novel from Scrivener to EPUB retains the blank lines. I know this because I'm using Sigil to get rid of the table of contents. (Scrivener can't be prevented from creating the TOC.) Looking at the html in Sigil, I see the empty lines -- they're paragraphs with a single non-breaking space character.

However, when I use Calibre to convert the EPUB to .mobi and then load the .mobi into my Kindle app (in Windows 10) the blank line spaces are gone. I don't know if this is an issue with the Calibre conversion, or if the Kindle app is just ignoring the html that it thinks isn't important.

I can fix the problem in a messy way by inserting a single period in each of the "empty" paragraphs. This looks ugly, clumsy, and amateurish, but it's better than having the empty line spaces disappear.

Is there a better way? Have others encountered this problem when Calibre converts to .mobi? What else might I try in order to try to fix it? I'm not enough of an html wizard to try adding a .css stylesheet, and anyway I don't know that a stylesheet would do any good.