by Gregory Price.
I am in an online novel writing workshop that is made up of smart, educated writers. We have a doctor, a couple of business people, a journalist, a radio producer, and an educator. Most of them are well-traveled, and all of them are well read. I would dare say this is a group who knows a few things.
In the first few weeks of our writing together, when we started submitting our prose pieces into our online classroom, I began to notice something. Almost none of the other writers were using indentation in their work.
At first I thought it was a glitch, or an oversight, but then it became a trend that snowballed into an outbreak.
In my written feedback and our conversations, I started calling a couple of the students out about it; after all, shouldn’t they have known better??
But because of the unanimity of their indentation behavior, I couldn’t help wonder though if I had missed some newsletter that announced the retirement of indentation. How could something so big have passed me by?
Initially, I thought my computer was to blame. I haven’t updated to all the most recent software, so I thought perhaps it was a technical problem, and surely not all the other writers’ conscious choice. But that wasn’t it as I myself was still able to indent my own writing.
I then moved on to thinking it might be a regional thing. The other student brought up under the U.S. educational system like me used indentation in their submissions whereas the rest of the participants in the workshop lived in Canada.
I thought maybe Canadians didn’t know when to indent or not, or it was a northern style thing not to indent.
I also work as an EFL professor in Japan teaching writing courses to non-native university students, and the textbooks I use teach indentation as a basic rule of paragraph writing. These textbooks are from U.S publishing companies, so I settled on it being a cultural issue.
However, then I noticed that our class instructor, who is certainly no slouch, was also writing her instructions, notes, and feedback into our online forum without using indentation … and she is American.
Baffled, I had to bring it up with her.
She explained that the class website platform we use is not formatted to accommodate indentation. Even if you indented each paragraph of your message, the format of the site would flush all of the writing to the left as soon as you posted your comments.
So, she and the others, including myself, had to adapt to the parameters by changing how we were writing.
For our regular conversation it wasn’t problematic; in fact, the flush left paragraphs on website writing make logical sense to the eye.
But if we were writing prose and sharing it in the online forum, rather than indent new paragraphs, the traditional way to indicate a change in character, tone, or scene, instead we had to accommodate the technology by putting in an extra line of white space between sections.
Now, if the writing in our class website were the only time we didn’t see any indentation, that’d be one thing, but when we submit our manuscripts, we do it in the form of a Microsoft Word file (.doc or .docx), which still very much supports the traditional use of indented paragraphs.
Yet still, even these submissions were mostly appearing sans-indentation.
I thought about this, and tried researching new trends in indentation on the Internet. Of course, the Internet is about as helpful with regard to providing concrete information about new breakthroughs for indentation as it is with giving me reasons I have had a sore throat for the past week.
I found a number of conflicting reports, unrelated to geography or schooling, age, or operating system. Some layfolk had interesting things to say on the etymology of the paragraph and typesetting in this online chat forum (in which all their comments were, you guessed it, left justified).
I also found this reassuring blog post from Editor Louise Harnby about when precisely in fiction writing you should still very much indent (dialogue, new paragraphs, etc.)
When I finished my search, I had the nagging feeling that amongst my peers maybe simple laziness was the culprit, and I was also slightly paranoid that I had a rare form of grammar cancer.
In the past, I have been accused of being a fuddy-duddy. New ways of doing things (such as people having face-to-face conversations with their cellphones in hand) sometimes rub me the wrong way, and I’m not shy about voicing my discontent.
In instances of formal writing, indenting is still standard (see how the various style guides handle it). Yet in other contexts, such as when writing a business letter or a block of text in a CV or résumé, it is not only acceptable but preferable that one not indent.
Technology has also modified our indentation use. Because many sites like our classroom website, auto-justify all text to the left, it’s become standard for all website writing to be so.
(The irony hasn’t escaped me that this very essay may likely not avoid appearing sans-indentation as soon as it is party to the programming whims of this particular website).
Looks like the times are a-changing and indeed, the formats used in many contemporary and emerging methods of communication have upended traditional norms of written communication.
Evolve or bust, I suppose.
Perhaps it is tricky to program indentation, or perhaps programmers don’t consider it important, or maybe on computer screens indenting brings about odd physiological responses in the eye mapping of text, who knows.
The beauty of language is that it is a living thing that evolves. When it does not, it dies. (Latin has had the same grammar for centuries.)
From time to time though, languages become extinct in order to make way for more useful forms of communication.
I maintain that we should be vigilant and pick apart our language in order to deliberate whether we should maintain certain norms, or whether it’s time to let them fade into the obscurity of that which is now deemed inefficient.
I believe indentation is valuable and should continue to be used for a few reasons:
However, if we regularly use spaces to separate our paragraphs, our ability to use them for certain effect becomes watered down, like my mom’s lemonade (one of her lesser recipes), and we are simply spilling out a potent splash of ingredient to the flow of our writing.
After I called out my intelligent peers about their indentation habits, I got some feedback.
Their remarks ranged from militant quill-gripping fists in the air, proclaiming how we as writers are the protectors of the sacred art form of the scribes and that we should not go lazily into the long electric dark ages;
The others just e-shrugged and mentioned that we live in an age where presidential proclamations are regurgitated into 140 characters and emojis are becoming an actual lexicon.
Is a space as wide as a thumbprint really worth preservation, or will indentation fade into nostalgia-filled obscurity and be looked back upon like the illustrated drop cap?
For my money, I believe it is a part of our formatting worth upholding, though with the antagonism of formats created by programmers, as opposed to those created by linguists, and sheer laziness, sometimes by those same linguists, it might just be a losing battle. Time will tell.
I’ll say this: if we as writers have the mental wherewithal to remember to charge our phones before they die, I feel confident that we can indent when we need to.
Originally from Memphis TN, Gregory Price has lived and taught in Europe, China, and now works as an adjunct professor at Tokyo University of Science in Japan. He holds an M.A. in ESL and a BFA for painting and sculpture. He is currently producing abstract photography based on radial symmetry of textures from various cities around the world and writing a novel.
A portfolio of some of his visual art can be found HERE.
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20 Responses
Greg– I just read this and and your bio. I will pop in and look at your visual art. How long have you lived in Japan? John
Hey John…I’ve been here for 15 years 24 days 11 hours and 12 minutes…shoot…13 minutes…uh…14 minutes and 22 seconds…uh…it’s never-ending…
Interesting that an article seemingly making a case for indenting, didn’t indent throughout.
Haha, that’s a good point! Yet with web writing, the standard is to left justify for ease of on-screen reading. That convention isn’t about to change but Greg does a great job in his article of interrogating the changes that come along with new technologies. I appreciate your good eye, and thank you for your comment, Ibrahim!
Hi Ibrahim,
When I originally wrote this, I indented throughout. The website cut the indentation upon publication. It is a pretty good example of irony.
-Greg
Website admin note: Greg, entirely agree. And the irony on the irony is that indentation is non-standard for web writing, so I had to err on the side of succumbing to the standard, which was created and is used because of scanning/ease of web readability. It’s a great article and lens through which to continue to find interesting how things continue to evolve in the writing/formatting landscape (and twist over themselves in the name of progress!). ~ Jenna
Hi Greg. I searched the web for an article on the current trends in indentation, because I am a graphic designer who indented the first word of each paragraph in a formal text block, and I was verbally insulted by an older woman who said “That looks so unprofessional. Indenting went out in the 50’s”, but my personal view is the same as yours. I feel that NOT indenting looks like the designer is lazy, and makes the whole document appear cold and impersonal, so, thanks to your views on the subject, I will continue to champion the cause for our little friend – the Indentation.!
I read many report prepared by students and I insist they use paragraphs and indent the first sentence of each.
That’s just me! Technology is only as good as we says it is.
Dennis, for as long as we put our ideas on paper, completely agree that indentation is 100% the way forward. That white space is essential for preparing our minds to take a breath and shift into a slightly different topic that develops the ideas. Web writing is another visual animal altogether, it seems. Appreciate your comment!
P.S My reply posted got rid of my indentation I posted….cant win. 🤣🤣
Very good piece. I thought i was the only one. Thanks for the article. All my questions have been answered satisfactorily.
Thanks so much for your comment, David! All the best with your writing (and indenting) ~ Jenna
Such a fantastic information. This is honestly very useful for bloggers
Thanks so much for your kind comment!
Fantastic dive into the subtle art of indentation. So many overlook how critical that small visual choice is for setting tone and controlling the pacing of narrative or code. Great read!
Outstanding.. your outlook on that is amazing
It’s reassuring (and a little funny) to see how something so small can reveal so much about how writing evolves with technology.
Very energetic article, I enjoyed that bit. Will there be a part 2?
Just in the process of stripping out new-paragraph indents for the thousandth time from academic writing, for a style-guided document that is geared towards digital communication with external stakeholders, and was musing on why they were still persisting. So Google led me to these thoughts from Greg. Interesting to read your take on how a writer might find still find indentation helpful. As someone educated in a pre-digital era, I am always open to adapting and evolving my text based work (and secretly also wished that the non-indent custom was alive when I was wrestling with a typewriter in the 80s!)…but also find some old habits die hard. (Double-space after a fullstop, anyone?)
Fiona, thanks for your comment. What a headache to have to manually remove your indents from the work you’re doing (surely someone has invented a macro for that??)! I take comfort that indentation will never be removed from printed texts; those are the break and intake of breath we need to begin a new “thought” (paragraph), but for whatever reason neurologically we’re just fine not getting that break in web-based writing. Curious, but so it is. For now, at least. Best of everything with your writing!