What is a White Space problem?

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   GwennyOhposted 3 years ago

   As asked in title--I have seen it mentioned a few times, to avoid creating white space issues in a hub. I use white space for formatting purposes, to make an article look tidier. That's a no-no? or what?

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      Don Bobbittposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      GwennyOh - Back in the days of typewriters and physical book printing, whitespace was essentially a waste of paper when printed.
      Today, in the world of computers, and electronic documents, using whitespace for "beautification" of a document, should be quite safe.
      Sure, in the code of a digital document uses a command that ends up formatting what you see on the screen as a blank line, or  sequence of blank characters, but what shows up on your screen as a blank line or a blank character should not use up any more code for one or the other, and thus the resultant digital document should not be "very" different in size at all, unlike it would be with a printed document.
      So, and I think even Glenn would agree that any concern by a writer's site would be over the potential sale of a printed version of a document?
      DON

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      1. 91

         GwennyOhposted 3 years agoin reply to this

         If it were over the value of a printed document, it seems that it wouldn't arise so often as a topic in the forum as a thing to avoid in articles. Though I'd seen it mentioned a number of times, no one spoke of specifics, I had no idea.

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      2. 97

         Glenn Stokposted 3 years agoin reply to this

         Don, Gwenny was asking about our articles on HubPages/Maven, not printed material. Your argument applies correctly to printed material, but it’s a totally different issue with online content with Maven.
         
         White space on Maven is already formatted with proper white space above and below subtitles. So if we add more, then it will have the possibility of overdoing it.
         
         Maven wants all our articles to have a similar style look and feel. That’s why we need to let their code do the work, and we can concentrate on our content and not try to change the style.

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            Don Bobbittposted 3 years agoin reply to this

            Glenn - Of course! And excess added whitespace detracts for the "look" of any article, whether on HP/Maven or any other site. I was just giving a little printing history for our compatriots.
            My pet peeve is the "never ending paragraph" LOL! DON

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            1. 97

               Glenn Stokposted 3 years agoin reply to this

               Yes indeed Don. I absolutely agree with you about those never ending paragraphs. That’s one of my pet peeves too. 
               
               When I see an article with run-on paragraphs where the author never considered separating “thoughts” with individual paragraphs, I tend to click away and do not bother to read.

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         2. 91

            GwennyOhposted 3 years agoin reply to this

            What I see when I post articles without added whitespace, is that in certain instances the text is somewhat compressed, erm, has no whitespace whatsoever, between it and another certain kind of capsule. I know that if text is above a video capsule this happens, but am not aware if it happens with other capsule types as well.
            
            I suppose this could be due to them preparing to insert ads there, but tbh, I have never seen one of my articles with no ad blocker on. Perhaps it's time to look!

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            1. 97

               Glenn Stokposted 3 years agoin reply to this

               I looked at your Psychic Skills article and I don't see any compressed text.
               
               I do see large sections of white space, but I don't think that's fault of your own.  Those sections might be due to ad spaces that were never rendered. It's a problem Maven is working on. There are still a lot of issues with the move to Maven that cause rendering problems.

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                  GwennyOhposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                  Thanks, I'll have a look and see what that's about.

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                  boxelderredposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                  Glenn - this was helpful for me to hear.  While reviewing some of my articles on niche sites I found several huge white spaces that were not of my doing.  I figured that out after I entered author edit view, tried to reformat one of the paragraphs in question.  Hearing that it's a known problem Maven is working on will prevent me from chasing my tail in futility on other articles.  Thanks for that.

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                     Glenn Stokposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                     You’re very welcome.

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2. 97

   Glenn Stokposted 3 years ago

   Too much white space occurs if you have more than one blank line between paragraphs. Just one blank line is sufficient.
   
   Another common mistake is leaving blank lines at the end of text capsules. It’s better to remove those. The formatting of H2 subtitles provides the appropriate white spacing between capsules, so it’s not necessary to place blank lines at the end of capsules.

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   1. 91

      GwennyOhposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks, I'll keep your advice in mind.

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