# When Did Non-Indented Paragraphs Become Acceptable?



## Geemont (Nov 18, 2008)

I was considering buying a very popular indie science fiction book, recently option by a major film director, but when I downloaded the sample, I noticed the paragraphs skip lines and don't indent.  OK, that's fine for forum boards, but I always expect books to follow standard formatting for the English language .  It has over 1,000 five star reviews and just a half dozen 1 star reviews.  

Am I turning into a fuddy-duddy thinking eBooks should have proper paragraph formations?  Or is this now just a blasé formality?

I bought the book anyway since samples don't always have the same issues, but the problem is still there.  I could return it, but it seems as if the reading pubic as accepted this a legitimate style.


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## Eltanin Publishing (Mar 24, 2011)

Not that Smashwords has all the answers, but their formatting guide says you should have one or the other - extra space between paragraphs, or first-line indent. I prefer first-line indent, but I've read books without indents and with extra space, and didn't really mind it.


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## QuantumIguana (Dec 29, 2010)

There's nothing improper about block formatting, it's just that block formatting is more common in non-fiction, while intending is more common in fiction.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

I don't know that I've accepted it, but I've not yet returned a book because of it. I do, however, much prefer indents with no line space between paragraphs, in part because it's what I've been reading for decades in paper books, but also because once I pump up the font size a couple notches to make it easier on my poor old eyes, those unused lines between paragraphs start to take up a significant chunk of my Kindle's screen.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

NogDog said:


> I don't know that I've accepted it, but I've not yet returned a book because of it. I do, however, much prefer indents with no line space between paragraphs, in part because it's what I've been reading for decades in paper books, but also because once I pump up the font size a couple notches to make it easier on my poor old eyes, those unused lines between paragraphs start to take up a significant chunk of my Kindle's screen.


Once again, NogDog has echoed my thoughts exactly. It's pleasure to see such intelligent, literate people on the forum.  

Mike


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## BooksByViolet (Jan 7, 2012)

I think it depends on what site you upload to - and even then I am not sure it "sticks" 100% of the time.  I have to admit that it irks me as well as I prefer an indent for the first line of every paragraph - call me old fashioned.  However, it can be very difficult to get that format accepted.  It took me four tries to get one of mine through with the indented paragraphs because I kept getting "errors" in spacing.  I am still not particularly pleased with the compromises I have had to make in that respect because I continue to get some random, odd page breaks (with no rhyme or reason) but nobody has commented on the formatting yet so I am hoping it is just my personal annoyance at this point.


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## DD Graphix (Jul 15, 2011)

I've noticed that in general, there are a lot of poorly formatted books out there; and that includes books coming from the "big" publishers. I recently read one where some idiot had locked down the ability to resize or change the font on the text. Irritated the unholy crap out of me. I also see odd paragraph breaks, double spacing, blank pages, etc. 

People want to get ebooks formatted in a flat hurry but I have found that if I am going to do it right I need to take some care to actually work in Sigil and massage the code to get it to work well. I'm sort of boggled that the big publishers are not bothering to do that, especially with their over the top pricing for ebooks.


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## Geemont (Nov 18, 2008)

Formatting isn't rocket science.  Mobipocket creator or Calibre can do a good basic job in under five minuets.  Or, may Cthulhu eat me first, spend an hour or two with same very simple HTML coding and making it look like you hired a professional.  

As for this book, I don't know, I could return it , but it would feel like pissing in the wind if I'm the only one rejecting block formatting.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

When you upload your word document that you have line by line indented with the tab key, Amazon uploading platform removes them forming those big blocky paragraphs.  Maybe the author didn't realize it or maybe that was just their style.  

I don't think it's widely accepted, I think it was probably just an oversight.


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## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

Get off my yard!!  You kids with your block formatting!  Why, back in my day...



Block formatting doesn't bother me as much as the move away from comma usage and single spacing between sentences ... grammar rules have changed since I last had a grammar class in the 70s but a least authors don't use SMS spelling in books yet ...


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

Once I'm into a story, I don't even notice this stuff.  Outside of that, though, as long as I can tell where new paragraphs begin indent or no-indent is a non issue for me.  I'd sooner take that than bizarre font size changes, background color changes, or other formatting quirks.  Needless to say, I'd much rather have some nonstandard spacing than an overall lousy story.


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## charlesatan (May 8, 2012)

It will depend on your style guide.

Non-indented paragraphs are acceptable as long as there's another way to differentiate them and applied consistently.


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## Steven Lee Gilbert (Mar 21, 2012)

I'm going to approach this from a different angle. I believe that there can and should be, if done well, a rhythm to the story as it unfolds on the page that mimics the natural feel of narration (oral storytelling), dialogue, interior monologue, movement, etc. Just as in poetry (and some song), that rhythm is influenced by many things of which indents and line breaks are but two. Punctuation, sentence and paragraph length also come to mind. I'm sure there are plenty of others.

I've not yet read a book formatted with block paragraphs, but I can't say I'd be put off just because of it. I can't imagine though what this particular style of formatting represents of the natural world. Hopefully, the author has some creative design in mind that helps their reader fall into the story more delightfully. Or it could have just been a mistake.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

I much prefer indenting - it removes any confusion where the preceding line of dialogue exactly fills the line.

Smashwords can be a problem though - when the Autovetter insists your upload is doing it wrong, maybe because of one stray line break somewhere in the body of the text, the temptation is to go 'try THIS for a plain text file' and upload something which is completely vanilla.


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## Eltanin Publishing (Mar 24, 2011)

lacymarankevinmichael said:


> When you upload your word document that you have line by line indented with the tab key, Amazon uploading platform removes them forming those big blocky paragraphs.


It removed the indents because you're not supposed to use tabs to indent first lines - you're supposed to use paragraph formatting that specifies first line indent. Mobipocket Creator does the same thing. (and I realize that lacymarankevinmichael might know this, just saying it for others).


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

I think the real problem is this ... some self-publishers do not realise that the system that converts Word Files to Kindle does not recognise Tab indents at the start of paragraphs. That's why some books wind up with no indents at all down their left-hand side.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

I think I would ask the publishers one question: Did you bother to look at the book after it was converted and published (both mobi and ePub versions)?

I think the answer would be no.

Mike


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

It doesn't bother me much. What does bother me is when quotes/dialogue are block quoted so it's not just the first line that indented, it's every line.


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## cheriereich (Feb 12, 2011)

I prefer indents, but it is acceptable to use block style formatting.

Now it's really annoying, though, when people use both.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

My personal feeling is that indents look more professional.  Possibly because that's what I'm used to seeing over the last 50 years of me reading paper books.  To me, block paragraphs with a space look like a term paper, or a blog post, or a forum post.  I don't pay money to read those.   So, yeah, the story may be great, but it's not going to count as 5 star to me if it's formatted with block paragraphs.  And it would make me marginally less likely to purchase again from the same author.

FWIW I can't recall the last book I read that had block paragraphs, but I don't get that many that aren't either by major publishers or independent authors whom I've already vetted.  I do remember one I got in the early days that not only didn't have indents, it didn't have spaces between paragraphs either.  It was basically impossible to read.  And wasn't worth struggling to try to do so either.


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## Cathy21 (Mar 28, 2012)

I've read two really good fiction books recently with blocks and although it took a few pages to get used to, it worked. It wasn't formatting errors but deliberate spacing decisions by the authors to present the voices of the characters in a different way. 

Cathy


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## Debbie Bennett (Mar 25, 2011)

I'm clearly too fussy. I hate block paragraphs in fiction. It's just not right.  

Indent using styles, not tabs, and both amazon and smashwords work like a dream...


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## Loren DeShon (Jun 15, 2011)

Put me down for indented paragraphs.

Block paragraphs look amateurish to me.


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## tahliaN (Nov 6, 2011)

I don't find them acceptable in fiction for all the reasons others have cited. One of the criteria for inclusion in the Awesme Indies listing of Indie books that meet the same kind of standards as traditionally published books is correct formating, which means no gaps between paragraphs which should be properley indented. Just because there are books out there that don't do it right, doesn't mean that it is acceptable. I have found formatting problems in ebooks from mainstream publishers too, (like the paragraphs not happening between different character's dialogue that I found in a Harper Collins book series. That was extremely diffifcult to read.) Hopefully these are issues that will cease to occur as time goes on. I think we need to mention them in reviews as a way of letting the author/publisher know that it's not acceptable. It's easy to make mistakes when you first start playing with ebook creation software.


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## philstern (Mar 14, 2011)

I agree about the non-indented paragraphs. Very annoying. 

And really, if God intended books not to have indents, why would He put a Tab key on our keyboards?


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Possibly because that's what I'm used to seeing over the last 50 years of me reading paper books.


Wow, Ann....you started reading really early.  Didn't you just turn 50?

Betsy


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

I just turned 53 but. . .yeah. . . .I did start reading pretty early. 

I admit some of those early books did NOT have indented paragraphs.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

philstern said:


> And really, if God intended books not to have indents, why would He put a Tab key on our keyboards?


I know that was a statement with humorous intent, but tabs and indents are two different functions in word processors. I could ague that the Tab key is unnecessary in formatting modern documents. I can't even remember the last time I used it except for tabbing between fields when filling out a form on a web page.

I got an ebook yesterday that does have paragraph indents, but has _double-spacing_ between paragraphs. It is very distracting. I'll probably run it through a Calibre filter to remove all that white space.

Mike


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## LadaRay (Apr 6, 2011)

It's generally very difficult to format for Kindle. It introduces errors out of the blue, where they should have never been. So, this could be just a formatting error, which people didn't bother to correct.

I personally was determined to get my formatting right, so I went back a number of times and made sure everything was perfect. But it took me a lot of effort and study. Not everyone will be as meticulous.


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