Sunday 10 February 2008

Endagered Species 2 - the Indent

'Any questions?' my tutor in web design asked sweetly. 'You've missed two classes. Do you have any particular questions?'

'Well, yes, there is one. What do I do if I want an indent?'

'A what?'

'Indent. You know, when you press Tab in Word, you get an indent.'

'Oh, well, that is advanced. Even the advanced class hasn't tackled that one yet. But there is a way, yes, and I'll show you if you're really interested, only not right now.'

'Why is it so difficult?'

'Well, you see,' he said, pulling on his lower lip, 'it's a psuedo property.'

So, good folks, the reason why this blog is laid out like a commercial report is because programmers are commercial guys, and think the double-line space between paragraphs is the right thing to do. So much so that the element for 'paragraph' in HTML (my, aren't we getting knowledgeable?) includes a 'white space', which is to say, a blank line. So every time you type a paragraph tag, bingo, you got what you don't want.

Save the indent! I mean - will you ever want to read a novel laid out like this? And a tip for aspiring writers: never send out a manuscript laid out like this.

1 comment:

Jeremy said...

Extraordinary response from your tutor - is he not paid to teach you? White space is hardly a secret. He needs reporting.
I hadn't blogged till Good Friday, although I've written about the phenomenon. There's loads of help on the blogspot blog and in the helpscreens. You can also try another template but the warning message suggests any overriding formatting you have applied will get lost. Worth trying out on a fresh blog.
I wil probably try out 'wordpress.com' next time as it does claim to be the most feature rich and adaptable.
LOL