short paragraphs

can you give an example, like a url to show what you mean exactly? I've got into double spacing on abc, like you say to make it easier on the eye, and find myself splitting up paragraphs more. Particularly speech in quotes seems to look crowded if not given space. isn't it something to do with the options when you paste a body of text - having to define if it's poetry, story or whatever?

I think you're meaning short paragraphs, rather than the line spacing itself, dgl. It is certainly easier to read that way, and to be honest, that's fairly easy to reformat. As the web becomes more prevalent, it may well change the way that people's attention span works - just try reading a page of Thomas Hardy compared to a modern novel and see how much more concentration a reader had to give in the earlier days of literature. The same is probably true of newspapers and magazines too.

I believe some of the joy in reading is about presentation - spacing, layout, font etc. so I guess sometimes the spaces are as important as the words.

I completely agree e-griff. That's why I like to upload my stuff in html. Doing it that way I can have it justified down the right hand side, indented sections, italics, space dividers in the centre of lines - all kinds of things that you can't do uploading plain text. It's well worth going to one of the html tutorial sites (the Web is full of them) and learning half a dozen basic commands that let you format your stuff the way you want it. Even more important if you write poetry I should think.

Might try that. I've got a new dual narrator poetry format that I can't submit to hear because it won't work with plain text.

I rarely have the time to worry about how a piece appears online in format. I just have to get the words down and written and posted before work. :)