Indent, No Indent, Indent

For a long time the “house style” here on the blog has been to indent the second and following paragraphs by 2 ems. Daniel Burka once criticized this as being a “relic of print.” And it is.

Yesterday, as part of my wiki hacking, I thought to myself “it’s time to get with the program, leave print behind, and do with a more Daniel-approved ‘white space between paragraphs, no indent’ style.” So I did. The result is on the left in the image below:

Screen shot showing no indent (left) and with indent (right)

I tried living with this style for almost 24 hours. But I couldn’t take it. Every time I opened my blog in a browser I recoiled in horror at the ugliness.

So this morning I have reintroduced this relic of print (witness right side of the image above). I’ll just have to live with Daniel’s contempt.

Comments

oliver's picture
oliver on June 20, 2005 - 15:37 Permalink

Amen. Daniel must die.

oliver's picture
oliver on June 20, 2005 - 15:38 Permalink

(Note, this is why politicians say context is so important for quotes).

Nicole Simon's picture
Nicole Simon on June 20, 2005 - 17:41 Permalink

As long as you don’t put this ugly way of writing into your feed (and I remember to not click through because of this), everything is half okay.

Half, because I usually click through to read text on the blog.
Nicole

alexander o'neill's picture
alexander o'neill on June 20, 2005 - 18:15 Permalink

Hooray!

Next we need an easy way to put two spaces after the end of a sentence.

Kevin O's picture
Kevin O on June 20, 2005 - 18:21 Permalink

I vote for white space. It sort of gives the mind some time to relax between discrete thoughts. I find indent jumbled looking, what’s ugly about white space? Perhaps a half-space (LF) would suit the medium better.

Erin's picture
Erin on June 20, 2005 - 21:12 Permalink

I think we are just so accustomed to indentation in text, print or otherwise, that that lack of them feels a bit alien, or wrong. We are taught to indent.

Is compromise possible? Indentation with a space between paragraphs?

paul's picture
paul on June 20, 2005 - 21:19 Permalink

artifact of print? next thing, we’ll be talking about this stuff as appearing on “pages” … .