Paragraphs - To indent or not to indent

[Tinkers]

DD is in year 5. Story writing slowing improving.
I showed one of her stories to an English Tutor to get his comments as I am in no place to judge whether it's good, bad or indifferent, and what she needs to improve on.

His main comment was that she hadn't indented her paragraphs. When asked she said school has never told her to.

Is this something that the school should have been teaching her to do. Or is it going out of fashion these days and if I get her to start indenting, is her teacher going to tell her to stop?

If she sits Indie exams, what would they expect her to do?

Thoughts please.

[Samlet]

That was all he could think of!!!

I think that indenting is going out of fashion and I suspect that you wouldn't lose marks for it. Layout is important in letters for the address etc, but less so otherwise IMHO.

[Tinkers]

He did make other comments, but nothing major. That was the main one and the one I didn't know what to do about it.

[pheasantchick]

I don't know whether this is correct, but for hand written stuff,I tend to indent, but for computer work, I tend to leave a line.

[Daogroupie]

In my experience in both primary and secondary school children are taught to block paragraph and indents are not mentioned. I am sure however, that they would not lose marks for it as it would be understood that they were only doing what they had been taught. DG

[faitaccompli]

Technically, the use of indented paragraphs is linked to whether you are using open punctuation or not.

For example, if you were writing a letter and addressed it thus:

Mrs. C. Smith,
21, The Road,

Etc etc (i.e. using punctuation) then you MUST use indented paras.

However, if you are using open punctuation:

Mrs C Smith
21 The Road

Then you would not use indented paras.

These rules do (or certainly did 30 years ago when I was taught it) apply to abbreviations. So, if you use i.e. rather than ie and etc rather than etc., that is also relevant to the indented para and open punctuation debate and will dictate the style of para you use.

But what a useless English tutor if that is all they can come up with!

[Amber]

I don't know whether this is correct, but for hand written stuff,I tend to indent, but for computer work, I tend to leave a line.

Me too. Year 11 DD says the same ( a rare moment of agreement between us on education matters, as usually, despite many years' teaching experience, I know nothing. I am savouring it). She also pointed out, which I would agree with, that teachers are so grateful to see any hint of paragraphing at GCSE level, they don't really care how it is flagged up.

I have to agree that if that is the best the tutor could come up with for a Year 5 child, then either you have nothing to worry about and your child writes absolutely perfectly otherwise; or/and... you could save yourself some money, perhaps?

[pheasantchick]

Amber - enjoy the moment! It may not come again for a while.

[Amber]

Amber - enjoy the moment! It may not come again for a while.

Too true.

[DenDe]

It is quite possible that the tutor advised indenting because it wasn't clear whether the child had started a new paragraph or not in a hand written piece. If this was the case I think the tutor was quite right to point it out.