I was told by Equestria Daily that they require this (though the rules implied it was optional, but that's just pointless whining.) Maybe this is because everything I read before the internet didn't do this, but I don't see the appeal. It just makes all the conversations look disconnected, it adds a bunch of pointless white space, it makes the story look longer but aesthetically unpleasing and so on. I can't imagine it does much for readability. Who has ever complained that paragraphs are too close together? On the other hand In books it almost always is just used as a wordless way of expressing that the story is going to some other time or place, so it's mildly jarring to see online stories like that.

459186
I'm... honestly not sure if this fits with the rules of the writer's group or not and I don't think its really the right place for it.

I am on the opposite end on this, however. Books use indents because they need to save on space, not because it's somehow "better" or the "right" way of doing it. That requirement isn't there when a fic is presented online, where spaces between paragraph makes for much more comfortable reading.

I'm of the opinion that you should always tailor your story to the medium its supposed to be presented in, unless you're doing otherwise for artistic reasons. Mediums are too often held back by trying to be too much like the one before it, video games try to be like movies, comics like novels, it's a mess. Getting stuck in the mindset that "my fanfic needs to look like it could be published in a book" is really not productive.

Besides, anyone who's read my stories know that the blank space between paragraphs can sometimes be useful...

459186 My story The Editor in My Head got on EQD just fine without spaces between paragraphs. It was approved earlier this week, so unless this is a really recent rule change, it seems kind of odd. Though you do want to avoid walls of text (I got dinged for that one the first time I submitted).

459189 I agree with this whole-heartedly! While we may not be used to seeing those paragraph breaks in novels, when writing fic's online, it makes for a more fluid reading experience. Not entirely sure why, but reading a fic with those spaces between paragraphs is simply easier to read in my opinion. I have personally dropped trying to get the majority of my fic's to EQD and simply write for the fun of it. So long as one person on here enjoys it, who gives a buck whether a group of bloggers think it's "worthy" of their board.

Don't get me wrong, I think EQD does an amazing job with their operation and got nothing but respect for the guys that run it. However, when I write, it's about enjoying myself and taking pride that at least someone besides myself thinks the word vomit I spew onto the Internet is worth reading

459199
I think many people make the mistake to use EqD as a sort of validation process, which it really isn't. I guess old-school sci-fi magazines aren't as popular as they used to be, which is the closest I can think of to the function of EqD, and as such, people don't really have that frame of reference.

Frankly, I think its a GOOD thing that we have that system in place. To take my own writing as an example, it's improved drastically, and I think I owe it pretty much entierly to how my attempts to get on EqD forced me to start looking for editors that could help me.

So far, I've never gotten on there, but it doesn't really matter, the bar on my writing was raised, and they had a hoof in it. That being said, they got a double-standard like HELL towards the more grimdark stuff, and while I don't write in that genre, I really don't like double standards.

459186
One major reason to add that space between paragraphs is that you don't know what aspect ratio your readers are using. I do a lot of my reading on my cell phone and without that space it can be a pain to figure out where one paragraph ends and the next begins.

459189
Actually, I'm willing to let this one stay for a while. Formatting is important to a story and it seems as if we got a somewhat decent debate out of it.

Cheers
~Cosmic

459280
Yeah, I agree, it's turned into a pretty decent thread.

Something me and Luce clashed on was the subject of indents (along with a space) he liked using them for each paragraph to make them extra clear, but I vetoed it. I tend to write in short paragraph and it would be extremely annoying form y style of writing, but might be useful for those who write longer paragraphs.

I personally don't mind either way. I would prefer it if stories were written without the spaces in-between the paragraphs, but I also don't mind them being there. Just so long as it doesn't start happening in books.

459315

Yeah, that's something that I do, but my paragraphs tend to be rather lengthy endeavors. I get the feeling that some people would complain about there being no space between paragraphs and it was just indented, but I suppose I've never written a story in that format to see if that actually makes a huge difference.

459191

Mine was rejected because the pre-reader didn't think it was funny, not for the layout. It just was another thing mentioned in the feedback and resulted in me starting this thread.

The last story I put on FIMFiction, "The Boneyard," immediately got a few down-votes because I used traditional first-line-indent formatting. I quickly corrected this, but I can see how this can trip up new writers.

Presentation for the web presents new challenges and opportunities for writers. Chapters no longer need to fit a certain length. The "page" is an odd concept. I've toyed with the idea of embedding charts, maps and external citations. I've thought about cutting back on exposition or explanation, things that would have been referenced in footnotes, assuming that the reader, if interested, would search Google or Wikipedia for references they didn't understand.

I dunno about this. Personally, when reading on a screen, I prefer a little space between paragraphs. I agree that indented paragraphs are a matter of saving space, not improving style. But fimfiction doesn't kill a single tree to host out stuff, so why not give the text some room to breathe?

Compare with the junk-text below:

Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts.
Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life
One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar. The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question Marks and devious Semikoli, but the Little Blind Text didn’t listen.
She packed her seven versalia, put her initial into the belt and made herself on the way. When she reached the first hills of the Italic Mountains, she had a last view back on the skyline of her hometown Bookmarksgrove, the headline of Alphabet Village and the subline of her own road, the Line Lane. Pityful a rethoric question ran over her cheek, then she continued her way.
On her way she met a copy. The copy warned the Little Blind Text, that where it came from it would have been rewritten a thousand times and everything that was left from its origin would be the word "and" and the Little Blind Text should turn around and return to its own, safe country.

VERSUS

Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts.

Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life.

One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar. The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question Marks and devious Semikoli, but the Little Blind Text didn’t listen.

She packed her seven versalia, put her initial into the belt and made herself on the way. When she reached the first hills of the Italic Mountains, she had a last view back on the skyline of her hometown Bookmarksgrove, the headline of Alphabet Village and the subline of her own road, the Line Lane. Pityful a rethoric question ran over her cheek, then she continued her way.

On her way she met a copy. The copy warned the Little Blind Text, that where it came from it would have been rewritten a thousand times and everything that was left from its origin would be the word "and" and the Little Blind Text should turn around and return to its own, safe country.

Been considering this issue recenty. I can honestly go with either tabs or separate paragraphs, so I'm curious which one is generally prefered.

484736

Actually, I think I like the first one better. It looks neater and flows easier, whereas the spaces between the paragraphs in the second example creates little pauses in my reading, as if I'm going through checkpoints on a list rather than a story.

484736
Actually, I can't read the second one it looks too small.

1166682
Exactly.

I much prefer simple indents.. I just hate wasting all that space.

1166682 I prefer spaces between paragraphs because it makes reading the story so much easier for me. My laptop is set pretty far back from me, since I prefer to have a lot of open space in front of my computer for various things, and my glasses are on crooked since on of the arms is bent and I can't afford new ones at the moment, so double paragraph spacing keeps me from getting headaches

I don't think anyone's mentioned this side point yet (and if they have... that early-onset Alzheimer's must be coming on faster than I thought O_O), but when it comes to indenting vs double spacing, using both is superfluous.

I'm about to be the biggest hypocrite by pointing out that I do indeed use both, out of habit more than anything. Like it's a subtle way of affirming that "yes, I know both styles and why they exist, shuddap!"

459199

... Judging by the upvotes alone, I refuse to believe it's word vomit. Unless you were being sarcastic, in which case I applaud your conceit.

as long as you have the proper pragraph first-line indentation, you're good, but I will admit that having the space between paragraphs DOES improve online legibility. There's no reason NOT to do it. I'm considering converting some of the stories I've already started to use it.

I read the rules just a week or two ago, and they stated that they PREFER to have the space between lines, but that it isn't REQUIRED as long as your formatting is good otherwise.

If you are particularly long-winded or descriptive, the indentation goes a long way with helping break the monotony of your writing. I write shorter paragraphs, so I end up eschewing the indent altogether.

But the single line space is a different issue altogether. So to resolve the issue, I will turn to TECHNOLOGY. Sort of.

When text is parsed using FiMFiction's text editor, it pays close attention to the line break characters - the special characters generated whenever you hit Enter/Return. When a line terminates in a single line break character, the parser adds in the HTML line break tag to indicate a line break, and then strips out the special characters.

But when a line of text is followed by two line break characters, the parser wraps the entire line of text in a block-level paragraph tag, and then proceeds to remove the special characters.

This is important for a specific reason. Try highlighting the space between two paragraphs. You'll see that FiMFiction's CSS code adds some padding to separate the paragraphs. No muss, no fuss. If you look at other websites, too, you'll see the same or similar behavior. What this indicates is that the internet as a collective entity has decided that putting spaces between paragraphs is important enough that it's going to put them there whether you like it or not.

My argument is a little fallacious, I'll admit. But like it or not, the use of white space is an elegant way to break up unsightly walls of text. This is especially true on the web, but it's even found its way into print publications in cases where space is not an issue.

1166950

I don't mind the size much since I can just zoom in if required. Not that I usually have to, but still.

1167619

Honestly, you're probably not doing your eyes any favors with that setup either way - you shouldn't be straining to read anything of your monitor. I recommend using the zoom function. (Ctrl and mouse wheel, or ctrl +/- if you don't have a mouse wheel.)

Anyway, I find it curious that some seem to consider one way more legible and vice versa. I wonder how much of this is due to habit? Like I said, I think using indents makes it easier to read (and looks a lot more professional) but I also came here from Fanfiction.Net where putting spaces between your paragraphs was pretty much the only way to format your story. I could see why some would be more used to it.

I think the reason people put spaces between your paragraphs is because it prevents a wall of text forming.

Here, let's see what happens when we play around with Shakespeare? Let's take Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" speech as an example:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

Kinda long winded right? A gigantic wall of text. Now, let's have some spaces between the paragraphs:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?

To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

Easier to read right? A nice, neatly spaces series of easy to digest blocks of dialogue. In the normal version, it's one massive chunk of dialogue. Of course, it doesn't help that this speech is actually only two sentences long, due to Shakespeare's apparent fondness for long-running sentences.

But who am I to nitpick over the grammar of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE? I'm just nitpicking over his formatting

1173285
I think a lot of it is what you're used to reading. Wiki articles and such don't usually have much dialog.

459213 459189 483974 484736 1170168
Actually, I've noticed that when I read on my phone screen -- SGS4; 1,920 x 1,080 pixel; 4.99 inch; 10% larger than most phone screens -- I prefer no spaces between paragraphs because my screen real estate is limited despite my phone having a larger screen than others, and I dislike having to scroll more often. I read on my phone often so this is a real issue for me.

Honestly, even on a nice big desktop monitor, I dislike wasted space and unnecessary scrolling, however trivial it may seem. Indentation is just as clear to me about 90% of the time as a space between paragraphs, as well, but I recognize there are cases where a line space is better, of course

Basically, I think it comes down to personal preference, and to require or even encourage one over the other seems unnecessary.

459186

You can indicate paragraph breaks either by line-spacing or indenting, but keep in mind that line-spacing with a hard break is the method that will survive almost all formatting methods. And indicating paragraph-breaks is very important for readability, as otherwise some very long lines at the end of paragraphs will muffle the paragraph break. A muffled paragraph break may confuse the reader, especially when the source of action or dialogue is uncertain. Seriously, if it happens in a particularly critical part of the story it can cause the reader to lose the whole point of what just happened.

459186

I was told by Equestria Daily that they require this

'Tis a lie!
My One in a Million featured on EqD without spaces between paragraphs.
They may prefer that, but I know for a fact it isn't required.

Who has ever complained that paragraphs are too close together?

Actually, I've had a lot of people complain about that.

On the other hand In books it almost always is just used as a wordless way of expressing that the story is going to some other time or place,

That would be a section break.

As a side note, I'd like to point out that both indenting and blank spaces between paragraphs is grammatically wrong.
Either one on its own is fine, but to use both together is redundant and unequivocally wrong.

459186 Screw EqD and its arbitrary admission process.

Use the formatting you're most comfortable with. I, personally, prefer reading fanfics with spaces between paragraphs, each one indented. (Although with an actual book, the spaces between paragraphs would seem really weird.)

If a story is good, I generally don't give a damn whether there are spaces between paragraphs, or whether paragraphs are indented, or both. So long as there's some manner of formatting indicating that it's the start of a new paragraph, and it remains consistent throughout the story, I can get over my own personal hangups and immerse myself in the story.

No spacing/no indents? Your formatting is bad, and you should feel bad.

1166682
I suppose an update is in order.

I have recently been switching to spaced paragraphs, since some readers do express dislike for the indented style. On the other hand, I have never seen anyone complain about spacing. People are just more used to it, I suppose.

Like before, though, it make no real difference to me. I just go with what seems the most popular.

3599671 I use spaces in all my stories. Interestingly enough, my story got rejected from a certain group, solely on the basis of the paragraphs not being indented. Apparently some people don't like spacing.

3599742

Well, given the group, you can't say you didn't see that rejection it coming.

3599762 True. Still, I think it's one of the least viable reasons to fail a fic.

3599542

As a side note, I'd like to point out that both indenting and blank spaces between paragraphs is grammatically wrong.
Either one on its own is fine, but to use both together is redundant and unequivocally wrong.

That's nice, but I like the look of both together, so I don't care if it's somehow considered wrong. Since I find it far easier to read with both styles at once, I'm not likely to ever stop writing my stories in that manner. And so far nobody has complained in the comments of my story about the formatting.

I think what's important is finding what styles suit your writing and what you are comfortable with as a writer. Essentially write in the way that you want to read it, only if it becomes an issue for your readers' enjoyment of your work should you actually address it.

I've been using linespacing up until now, but I will switch to indentation in future projects. It's just that I especially rapid dialogue seems disjointed, and scene breaks are far easier to spot when when indenting. As far as space-saving goes, I must say that I do like to scroll as little as possible as I'm usually doing other stuff with my hands while reading, so I can understand that argument as well, although it didn't play a major role in my decision.

It shouldn't be a matter with EqD, though. I've seen indented and linespaced, and indented and linespaced stories on there. I also got onto EqD without fixing every little thing the pre-readers had to say. For instance, my EqD pre-reader said that I used too many semicolons. It's considered an 'advanced' punctuation, and since the fic was AJ's POV, he/she felt that it was OOC. Frankly, I just found this criticism invalid since the story was not a journal entry but a narrative, and as such it's not supposed to sound as though AJ wrote it down, but as AJ narrated it, making the use of semicolons perfectly fine. Didn't change it, got featured anyway.