[comp.text.tex] Indentation of paragraphs vs. space between pars

haccme@milton.u.washington.edu (Thomas Ridgeway) (03/15/91)

In article <1991Mar14.163259.17221@csrd.uiuc.edu> eijkhout@s41.csrd.uiuc.edu (Victor Eijkhout) writes:  >graeme@otago.ac.nz writes:
>>Indenting paragraphs versus space between paragraphs
>Controversial subject. Let's hear it.
[much text deleted]

>>  Jan Tschichold, one of the most influential typographic
>>designers of this century, has this to say on the subject:
>
>But Tschichold is almost exclusively concerned with
>book design, and also he's been turning ever more 
>radically old-fashioned all his life. He started
>very promising.
>
>>  Indentation is technically and aesthetically the
>>  best and simplest way to distinguish paragraphs and
>>  it would be foolish to regard it as out of
>>  date. ...
>[...]
>>  Extra space between paragraphs should never be used
>>  instead of indentation in books and magazine work;
>>  it is excusable only in newspapers and cheap
>>  pamphlets.

    I was recently involved in this same discussion with a publisher;
whatever one's general principles of typography, one ought to be
prepared to recognize the individuality of particular books.  The recent
book in question in my case was collected essays on topics in the
historical phonology of asian languages.  Because of the fabulous
array of diacritics in use we had variable line-spacing within paragraphs,
and due to the plenitude of displayed citations forms the left edge of
the text was also , uhhm, a very dynamic environment.  Ordinary
means of flagging paragraph boundaries were not up to the task.

So we did what you should never do, we indented _and_ we spaced.

It'll be out in a little while; you can hang me after you've seen it.

Getting fitted for a necktie,
Tom