The phrase
"paragraph breaks" refers to the spaces or empty lines that separate paragraphs in written text. They help readers to visually see where one paragraph ends and another begins.
Full definition
As an editor and beta reader, I always say that choosing where to
put paragraph breaks is a voice - dependent decision.
That means turning on all of the visual indicators that show you
where paragraph breaks, tabs, and section breaks have been inserted.
Another common mistake authors make is adding two or
more paragraph breaks between paragraphs (hitting Enter more than once at the end of a paragraph).
To me, it's always useful to be able to see visual representations of things like
hard paragraph breaks and tabs.
If you only
use paragraph breaks to create the scene breaks they can be lost in the formatting process.
Microsoft Word's default Normal style in older versions of Word is set to not add space between paragraphs by default so authors learned to add them in manually with extra
paragraph breaks instead of modifying the style settings.
-LSB-...] words carefully, Liz Bureman explains the techniques of parataxis and hypotaxis, Jami Gold explores the link
between paragraph breaks and voice, and Kristen Lamb gives us 3 ways to add the sizzle to fiction that -LSB-...]
When I leave comments
about paragraph breaks in my editing or beta reading, I always include a disclaimer along the lines of:
This course gives you a paragraph
by paragraph break down of the one to four family contract and puts out the similarities and differences in the Promulgated Contracts.
[
PARAGRAPH BREAK] The Champions include CEOs of major companies, government ministers, and executives of research and intergovernmental institutions, foundations, farmer organizations, and civil society groups.
(The pictured book has the same problem as all of O'Reilly's Kindle editions that I've seen: it seems to force a
-
style paragraph break instead of the Kindle norm: book - style, tab - indented paragraphs.
Here's an important tip for cutting and pasting your excerpt: Since your author webpage accepts HTML (to allow for colored fonts, image - insertions, etc.), you MUST
identify paragraph breaks in your excerpt.
Since there are less possibilities of error detection in these softwares, there are more chances of missing text, improper font size and awkward
looking paragraph breaks in your final product.
I strongly prefer ePub files, but I've had so many big name publishers send me the crappiest PDF files that have
chaotic paragraph breaks, repeated content, and disjointed headers that ruin the reading experience.
Fixes formatting and encoding of text files downloaded from the Internet by restoring
proper paragraph breaks and getting rid of HTML markup and excessive space characters.
In an attempt to disown this public relations fiasco, in 2012 APS (presumably POPA) quietly introduced a
new paragraph break in the 2007 Statement so as to alter the original intent of the passage.
- No HTML tags allowed - Web page and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically - Lines and paragraphs break automatically
Your book designer will need to remove all of these
extra paragraph breaks in order to format your book properly.
Trust me when I say that if your books aren't designed properly
with paragraph breaks, indentations and the like, readers will stop reading.
The study authors also stressed the importance of collaboration and innovation in increasing senior pet lifesaving (
paragraph breaks added to improve readabililty):
Asked pupils to think dramatically as well as analytically, to truly understand
how paragraph breaks can affect the structure, pace and response to a piece of writing.
Nonfiction authors may opt for no indentation so long as paragraphs are separated by a
full paragraph break.
Use paragraph breaks and bulleted lists where appropriate to add structure and break up large blocks of text.