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Writing one sentence per line

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Re: Writing one sentence per line

#211

Post by ghaff »

kadoban wrote: post #86
TremendousJudge wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, same here. If you're going to have any text commited to git, it'll work much better if it's one sentence per line. Not that git is great for prose, but it kinda does the job and I don't need to have a new tool. Hammers, nails.

> Not that git is great for prose, but it kinda does the job and I don't need to have a new tool. Is there really something better? Git is pretty great in general, and prose doesn't seem like there'd be much room for improvement in tooling. I'm not a writer really though, so maybe I'm missing something?

At least with a controlled circle of people who respect that, say, handing off a doc to an editor means they shouldn't make inline changes any longer, collaborative doc editing like Google Docs.

As the above implies, you don't have great version control and some of the process management is manual. But it works well for people accustomed to working that way and it's much more familiar for people who don't regularly use git (or use it at all).

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#212

Post by ghaff »

JoshCole wrote: post #198
coliveira wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem with most advice on English writing. They only teach you how to write as at a level that a 8 years old reader would understand. Most modern books, fiction or not, are written at a juvenile level, at the formal request of publishers. As a result, the level of reading and comprehension for most people has decreased to a level that is lower than in any other literate society.

> they only teach you how to write as at a level that a 8 years old reader would understand. Many if not most modern writing advice will remind you to focus on your audience. Most audiences aren't composed of eight year olds. So it isn't true that most advice suggests writing for eight year olds. > As a result, the level of reading and comprehension for most people has decreased to a level that is lower than in any o…

>So it isn't true that most advice suggests writing for eight year olds.

That may be true although I can tell you from personal experience that writing optimizers for places like trade press sites absolutely push you towards more basic language, shorter sentences, etc. One site in particular I used to write for sometimes told me every single time that I should basically dumb down my prose. And I don't write in a particularly literary way and I've pretty much never had this feedback from human editors.

>Once, journalists wrote. Now everyone does.

Interesting observation. At one point, most business people above a certain level were "writing" by dictating to their secretaries which is a completely different mode of getting information onto a page.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#213

Post by hanifc »

personlurking wrote: post #172

Reminds me a bit of Jordan Peterson's advice to rewrite every sentence until it's the best it can be, and then repeat that with each paragraph. His son recently released Essay, a tool to help write better, in the sense mentioned above. https://essay.app

This entire comment was what came to mind as soon as I opened the post. Glad I found it here.

His process is outlined here: https://medium.com/practicecomesfirst/dr-jordan-b-petersons-...

I believe the app is a tool to help you learn, practice, and internalize that process.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#214

Post by usr1106 »

ghaff wrote: post #194
kadoban wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I believe this is a generational thing. I learned double-space as well, but pretty sure not long after me they stopped teaching that, and I've totally stopped doing it.

Double spaces was the norm on (almost always monospaced font) typewriters [EDIT: in English]. I assume it lingered on computers until sometime in the 80s but was shifting especially once proportional fonts for written material (other than things like code of course) became the norm. I couldn't tell you when I switched.

Double spaces was the norm for English. I understand it is considered mostly obsolete nowadays.

It has not been the norm for German ever.

Edit: Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22975299

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#215

Post by harshreality »

jhardy54 wrote: post #163
avgcorrection wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good typography seems to dictate a wider space after a sentence than between words. So this is a typewriter habit to mimic that kind of thing (like the sibling noted).

Some people might prefer two spaces, but my understanding is that all authorities on “good typography” have standardized on one space: https://practicaltypography.com/one-space-between-sentences....

Rendering engines can do anything they want. The question is about source representation only, for semantic purposes. That has nothing to do with output representation. Even practicaltypography completely misses that distinction.

You wouldn't publish anything with line breaks between sentences either. Double spacing or line breaks both work nicely for semantic purposes because html (or markdown which almost always ends up displayed somewhere as html) will ignore it.

Any print publishing software in the 21st century should be aware that two spaces in a prose text source is a hint for a sentence break, and treat it appropriately. They often apply custom spacing (slightly more than 1, but nowhere close to 2) between sentences anyway. Without the two spaces, they have to algorithmically guess at sentences. You just won't notice when there are sentence detection errors, unless you're a typography fanatic; who's going to notice 1 space instead of 1.2 or whatever the optimum happens to be?

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#217

Post by dubya »

TheFreim wrote: post #108
BeFlatXIII wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two spaces between sentences is how I've always typed them, even if it's in HTML or MD or other forms that will condense them into a single space in the final render. The two spaces mark a clear intent to end a sentence instead of a period to punctuate an abbreviation.

Many people learned to add two spaces to the end of each sentence which is now built in to their muscle memory. My father learned to type adding two spaces to the end of every sentence, they tried to teach that to me in computer class in middle school but since I had a lot of experience typing already without it I never felt motivated to change my habit to add two spaces. I never really saw the point, in most formats…

For me it's a holdover from a high school typing class, but I find it useful. I mostly write in LaTeX which just ignores the extras. On the iphone, two spaces are replaced by a period and a space, which is quite handy.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#218

Post by earth_walker »

ghaff wrote: post #210
earth_walker wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was taught to use double spaces in highschool typing class (we used electric typewriters with the buffer off). In the ~35 years since I have only ever met a handful of people, all older than me, who did it in practice. I continued through university while using a computer to type things up, I'm pretty sure my thesis had double spaces after periods, written in WP. Once I graduated I dropped it pretty quickly. Was th…

>Was there an early version of Word's spell-check-on-the-fly that underlined double spaces, or am I miss-remembering? I don't remember that and I was a fairly early user of Word going back to DOS days although I rarely use it any longer.

Apparently you could set up one or two spaces depending on your preference, however recent versions of Word now mark double spaces as an error by default.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#219

Post by dang »

I tell founders not to write like this, at least for HN, and I edit their launch posts when they do (https://news.ycombinator.com/launches), because it reads like a sales letter.

But the OP is saying that it's useful to make the sausage that way, not sell it that way, which is a different point.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#220

Post by auxbuss »

jalino23 wrote: post #116
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.…

Where can I read more of this kind of musicly writing? It was so satisfying to read! I truly enjoyed it like no other reading I’ve experience before

Sebastian Barry is a master. Try Days Without End.

Quotes: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/50666270-days-without-...

The criminally unknown Janni Howker borders on poetry in her prose. Try Martin Farrell.

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