Japanese love for white space...

[Emoni]

This is a bit of an "out there" question, but I'm extremely curious.

I have used Mixi for over two years now. Both to practice my Japanese and keep in touch with friends. One thing I have noticed is the way in which a lot of Japanese friends write their Mixi posts... with MASSIVE amounts of space between sentences that sometimes require the scrolling of an entire page before hitting the next sentence.

I'm sure some of you are familiar with this. Sometimes it is a few sentences before the massive gaps of nothingness, sometimes it is only one.

Is there a reason for this? From my point of view, it simply seems to be awful and annoying writing style. As if I were to write like the following below.




So I went out and got some flowers today. Yup, at the typical shop I usually go to.













They had some red ones, which surprised me because it isn't the season for such flowers.





















I think I'll head to sleep and dream about those amazing flowers.
























Good night.

[Prizm]

Weird. Maybe you could ask them?

[ASHIKAGA]

This is a bit of an "out there" question, but I'm extremely curious.

I have used Mixi for over two years now. Both to practice my Japanese and keep in touch with friends. One thing I have noticed is the way in which a lot of Japanese friends write their Mixi posts... with MASSIVE amounts of space between sentences that sometimes require the scrolling of an entire page before hitting the next sentence.

I'm sure some of you are familiar with this. Sometimes it is a few sentences before the massive gaps of nothingness, sometimes it is only one.

Is there a reason for this? From my point of view, it simply seems to be awful and annoying writing style. As if I were to write like the following below.




So I went out and got some flowers today. Yup, at the typical shop I usually go to.













They had some red ones, which surprised me because it isn't the season for such flowers.





















I think I'll head to sleep and dream about those amazing flowers.
























Good night.

Could it have something to do with posting those messages from a cell phone?
I know someone who keeps a blog and he uses his cell phone to update it during the day, and his blog often looks like that.

[Emoni]

My example is extreme but I know two people who post like that, and many others who just post with excessive space.

I don't THINK it is a cell phone, but actually I never considered that. I wasn't aware you could post into mixi from a keitai. Maybe that is why?

[nice gaijin]

I have no new insight, other than to point out how unnecessary it was to quote the OP for the exact reason emoni was complaining.

[epigene]

Yes, a lot of Japanese do that.

Based on what my experiences seeing it for the first time in the past, it was originally intended to make the reader wonder what will come next, with the next sentence or paragraph not yet visible on screen.

When the poster is a good writer with a sense of humor, the next sentence to appear on screen was a suprise, a twist in the story or a joke.
That was OK, but it seems everyone's doing that nowadays... :souka:

[Emoni]

I have to say that I HOPE that isn't the only reason, as that would have to be the most absurd method of creating reader suspense I have ever seen. Maybe if you do it once a month in one post, but doing it almost EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE is ludicrous.