Non-Designer’s Type Book, The, Second Edition

8. Half-Inch Indents

Yes, I know your typing teacher taught you to indent five spaces or one-half inch, but that’s a very old habit left over from typewriters. Typically on a typewriter a person was typing all the way across the page, and the type was relatively large.

A standard typographic indent is one em space, which is a space as wide as the point size of the type. In IO-point type, an em space is IO points wide; in 36-point type, an em space is 36 points wide. This is roughly equivalent to two spaces, not five. Especially when your type is in columns, a half-inch indent is way out of proportion.