Such, errr, ‘giants’ as BBC evidently already adhere to this advice, and others follow in their step.
Though I suspect that the motivation is different.
Writing one sentence per line
11–20 of 307 posts
Re: Writing one sentence per line
#12I personally use this approach but mostly because a lot of what I write ends up in a git repository and diffs make way more sense when there is only one sentence per line. I also find things much easier to manipulate in vim when sentences don't span lines.
> diffs make way more sense when there is only one sentence per line I did the same thing for some time for papers at university for the same reason. It used to annoy me, because I hate to change for my tools, I rather have my tools support my workflow: There should be a nicer diff for that.
You could write a script which replaces the end of sentences with a new line and use git hooks[0] to run it before every commit. You wouldn't have to write any differently.
Re: Writing one sentence per line
#13This was the rule in the 1980s when using nroff and it's a habit I developed when using any markup. It's good to know that it's been rediscovered again as newcomers mature in their tool use.
Re: Writing one sentence per line
#14beautiful html, indeed!
Re: Writing one sentence per line
#15I started doing this mostly for cleaner commits in version control systems. After a while I also noticed it made the writing more concise. It's much easier to spot redundant "filler" sentences.
Re: Writing one sentence per line
#16Such, errr, ‘giants’ as BBC evidently already adhere to this advice, and others follow in their step. Though I suspect that the motivation is different.
No. Their paragraphs rarely extend beyond two sentences in news reports https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61859881 but it does happen.
Re: Writing one sentence per line
#17Most writing style rules are context-dependently apt. The quote by Disruptive_Dave of Gary Provost rings true for artistic writing. Sentence length limits are more helpful for technical writing like papers/documentation, with its many side-details - just as a complexity control.
Either way, though, for sentence source formatting, sentences on line boundaries also help version control systems since a diff shows the delta on a per sentence basis. Note that this is slightly different than one per line - it is more integer number of lines per sentence since some are multi-line. Same ethos, though.
Re: Writing one sentence per line
#18I used to do this all the time, when I worked for a Japanese company. They used to translate my emails, "in-place," so this allowed the translators to insert a line of Kanji characters, below each of my lines. It also taught me to be frugal in my content, but you'd never know it, reading my stuff, these days...
It's also one of the first rule I've learned when communicating professionally in Korean.
Write the exact same paragraph, one with an EOL between each sentence, one without.
Natives always understood the paragraph with EOL. Personally I didn't see any difference but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think it's true all the time, but it shows a lot more when you speak in a language where the grammar is super different from what you're used too.
Re: Writing one sentence per line
#19This is perfect in the era of fast-food media like TikTok or shorts.
We don't need long sentences, 140-chars are enough.
Re: Writing one sentence per line
#20I approach this by separating writing from editing. Just keep writing, ignore the typos, self-censorship or formatting and keep moving.
So, I've build myself an app to make that easier. Essentially, it's just a more stupid version of a text box. It's free, it's private, and it's meant to put you in the state of flow.
I've been using it every day for the past 3 years or so and I know that some people find it useful too, but even if I was the only user, I'd still be quite happy with it, since I suck at sticking with habits :)
Check it out!