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Typography

The Indent and the Blank Line

·6 min in full, in the book·PagePerfect Journal

Also available as a typeset book

Set the same chapter twice, once with a one-em indent at the head of each paragraph and once with a blank line between paragraphs and no indent, and the second setting is longer. Every paragraph after the first has bought itself a line. On a page of 35 lines carrying five paragraphs that is four lines gone, and across a novel it is the difference between two printing charges.1 We think that page count is the best case for the indent, better than the appeal to the baseline grid that usually comes with it.

The rest of this essay is in the book

It goes on to cover:

  • The grid does not break
  • The one experiment in the neighbourhood
  • The space the rubricator left
  • Where block setting came from
  • The arithmetic and the printing bill
  • Indent in print; a whole line on screen

About the book

Notes

  1. Arithmetic rather than measurement, and the reading of the old 15 per cent figure as one point on a curve is our argument. A blank line adds one line per paragraph, so the extra pages are about one part in the average paragraph length: one in 6.7 is 15 per cent, one in five is 20, one in three is 33, one in ten is 10. It assumes the blank line is a full line; where the gap is an em, as on screen, the saving is slightly smaller. Evidence E: the journal’s argument.

Further reading