An ab initio study of four polymers, polythiophene, polypyrrole, ladder-type polythiophene, and ladder-type polypyrrole is presented. Upon an analysis of the variation of the band gap when comparing the non-ladder and the ladder-type polymers, a discrepancy is found between the thiophene and the pyrrole polymer families. For polythiophene, the ladder-type polymer has a larger band gap than the non-ladder polymer whereas the opposite is found for the pyrrole polymers. This difference is explained in terms of the competition between the bond length alternation and the effect of the charge density distribution in the carbon backbone. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.