“It seems to me that the average punctuation mark, if it’s being used correctly, becomes invisible to the reading mind. You’re not meant to interpret a comma; you’re barely even meant to notice it. (There are stories that deliberately call attention to the punctuation marks they use, of course, but they’re anomalies, and I would hazard that most of them fail to achieve anything important by the practice.)

On the other hand, a white space, perhaps because it is absent of information, presents itself as something to be understood. Many readers might fail to accept such an invitation, simply hurrying on to the next block of sentences, but I do think the request is implicit every time you encounter one. What a white space most frequently suggests is that some significant current of the narrative is coming to a stop and a new one is beginning. A practiced reader will approach it with that expectation in mind.”

—Kevin Brockmeier, from an interview entitled Kevin Brockmeier on White Space at The Reader of Absurdist Books, posted April 06, 2006. Ran into this by way of Bookslut.