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Writing one sentence per line

sive.rs

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Re: Writing one sentence per line

#141

Post by capableweb »

mad44 wrote: post #88

I had copied this Emacs macro just for doing that. ;; one sentence per line (defun wrap-at-sentences () "Fills the current paragraph, but starts each sentence on a new line." (interactive) (save-excursion ;; Select the entire paragraph. (mark-paragraph) ;; Move to the start of the paragraph. (goto-char (region-beginning)) ;; Record the location of the end of the paragraph. (setq end-of-paragraph (region-end)) ;; Wrap…

Ironically, this snippet seems to be a bit too much wrapped!

You need to have a empty line between each line on HN for it to format correctly. If you also ident it by four space, it gets marked as code in the markup.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#142

Post by avgcorrection »

chrismorgan wrote: post #33
black_puppydog wrote: post #2

Or, with a bit more nuance: Semantic line breaks https://sembr.org/

> 5. A semantic line break SHOULD occur after an independent clause as punctuated by a comma (,), semicolon (;), colon (:), or em dash (—). Uh oh, that’s incompatible with standard em dash usage, which is with no surrounding whitespace. (I’m designing a lightweight markup language of my own, and it’s tempting to special-case an em dash at the end of a line that is not preceded by a space, to join to the next line wit…

A hairline space between em-dashes can be quite visually pleasing (in American writing; British uses full spaces around en-dashes). Like what Medium does.

But in that case I would prefer that the source text still has no spaces. Such things can be added in postprocessing.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#143

Post by avgcorrection »

drewg123 wrote: post #90

Just please, for the love of god, don't do it in slack. Nothing annoys me more than a colleague writing a long slack message when I'm AFK, and having my watch buzz like an angry bee when they hit one carriage return (and send a new slack message) every 10 seconds.

Ctrl+Return

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#145

Post by yvdriess »

mad44 wrote: post #88

I had copied this Emacs macro just for doing that. ;; one sentence per line (defun wrap-at-sentences () "Fills the current paragraph, but starts each sentence on a new line." (interactive) (save-excursion ;; Select the entire paragraph. (mark-paragraph) ;; Move to the start of the paragraph. (goto-char (region-beginning)) ;; Record the location of the end of the paragraph. (setq end-of-paragraph (region-end)) ;; Wrap…

I just love the irony that one needs to manually insert newlines to copy over code to automate inserting newlines.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#148

Post by cseleborg »

andai wrote: post #138
wongarsu wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A paragraph with just one 50-word sentence doesn't have varied sentence length either ;) For technical writing, "no more than one thought per sentence" works quite well in my opinion. Or at least it's a good guideline to apply in the first pass of proofreading.

I agree with no more than one thought per sentence in general, though I have the opposite problem: it often takes me several paragraphs to get a single thought across. So the end result ends up being something like 0.1 thoughts per sentence. I guess what I'm trying to get across is not a single thought but a perspective which requires some background and context to appreciate, and I struggle with separating out the e…

I struggle with this, too. I'm just very verbose. I try to keep this piece of advice about working to shorten a text in mind: it's done, not when there is nothing more to add, but when nothing more can be removed. (Saint-Exupery, I believe). It helps me a little bit.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#150

Post by [deleted] »

Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #8

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences.…

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