Kindle First Line Indents

My Kindle First Line Indents are all over the place! 

That's probably the most-often heard cry among Kindle publishers... when they view their eBook -- even though it looked perfectly fine as an MS Word doc.

Some even report going through hundreds of pages and thousands of words, adding or deleting indents line by line.

The sad thing is that it is so easily prevented.

(It's also fixable... just enter a couple of pertinent words into the Search box under the Birds on a Tight-Rope.)

All it takes is an understanding of the Kindle's default first-line indent, and the knowledge of how to work with it.

First, it might help to understand WHY the Kindle imposes that default first-line indent...

Too many people don't realize the necessity of a first line indent, and send their text to the Kindle as one massive glob of words.

To make matters worse, the "default" for Normal Style of MS Word 2003, the most-used word processor in the world, is "no first line indent" and "no space between paragraphs"

(That's because we, as writers, are different, our editors are different, and others have different requirements... by leaving these options open, we can enter what we want there.)

Can you imagine what a couple of hundred thousand words with no first line indents and no space between paragraphs would be like?

The programmers of the Kindle decided that the best solution was to impose a first line indent.

And it does work!

It works if we work with it, that is.

If we just leave it alone, and don't try to help it along with tabs and spaces, our file will be nicely lined up with even and consistent first line indents for all paragraphs.

The programmers, no doubt reasoned... "This will save the necks of those who don't know how to enter a first line indent... and it won't affect those who do know how."

Uh-Oh!

It's that last half sentence that causes all the trouble!

Nobody told us that all we have to do is enter our own first line indent into our paragraph style!

It doesn't matter what you enter... even 1 px will disable the Kindle's automatic first line indent. (And being so small, it will look like no indent at all if you want block paragraph paragraphs).

{Update: The 1 px I mentioned above is the smallest you can enter with Word's scroll arrows; it works, but it is "slightly" noticeable.

A reader of these pages reported that it is possible to enter an even smaller indent if you actually type it in... you can't use Word's up/down arrows.

As a result, I'm offering this update:

The best way (I've found so far) to disable Kindle's automatic first line indent, is to type in a first line indent of "0.01".}

The Kindle's default size of the indent is 48 px... just like MS Word's... but if you want more or less, just modify your paragraph style to suit.

And, of course... don't do anything by hand... let the Styles handle all the indents.

Next... for those who really didn't know how to enter their own first line indents with styles, I'll tell how to "Modify" a style to include -- or exclude --a first line indent.