: "Empty-space" vs "three-dot" scene break What's the difference between the two? I've seen both in the same book. For example in the Bone Clocks by David Mitchell: Space breaks: He’s clever,

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If you see both white space and three asterisks, it should always be the case that the asterisks are just being used at a page break, where the reader might not notice the vertical white space.

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To the best of my knowledge, there is no widely-accepted rule of when asterisks are appropriate versus when extra white space is appropriate versus other possible conventions.

To my mind, and for what it's worth, a row of asterisks indicates a bigger break than a blank line.

One catch to white space: It can get lost when a document is reformatted. Like, I just finished converting a book I wrote from print format to Kindle. It's non-fiction, but I used white space to indicate a break in the chain of thought at a number of points. Except ... on some Kindle devices, the blank space is displayed as I wrote it. On other Kindle devices, they put blank space between ALL paragraphs, and no extra space where I had these breaks, so the distinction is lost. It wasn't a real big deal so I just didn't worry about it, but in other contexts I can see it becoming confusing. A reader might think this is a continuation of the previous scene when it's really a new scene, and be several paragraphs in before realizing, "Wait, they're not still at Bob's house, and how did Sally get here? And, oh, wait, somewhere in there the scene moved to Sally's office. Where was that?" etc.

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Author's preference is, of course, the deciding factor, but one has to take into account readability as well. Using extra space to determine a scene change is not very common and it is possible that the reader could misinterpret it as a formatting error, or perhaps just be confused by it, whereas the three dots send a clear message that this is an intentional and distinct change of scene.

It should be noted, by the way, that three dots are not the only accepted scene-change marker: some books, especially fantasy ones, will make up their own seal or symbol to act in this role.

The most important factor in readability is consistency---no matter what you do, if you do the same thing every time, the reader will probably pick up on it---which makes me question David Mitchell's choice to use two different kinds of markers. Perhaps there is a compelling story reason for him to do so, but in general maximum readability is the best choice.

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There's no universal standard for this, or at least not in fiction. Books generally pick one style and stick with it. Larger narrative breaks than a section break can be indicated by starting a new chapter.

The exception is in printed books that use extra space between paragraphs to designate the end of a section, and when this happens at the end of a page: In this circumstance, the book will often use a row of asterisks or other symbols instead of empty space, for clarity's sake.

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