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Writing one sentence per line

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Re: Writing one sentence per line

#231

Post by kuhzaam »

preseinger wrote: post #230

One sentence per line makes prose feel sanctimonious, even self-aggrandizing. I find this dude's writing un-readable for exactly this reason. All of his articles are like HTML versions of the Ducks Go Quack TED Talk [0]. I just roll my eyes. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s

In his defense, he is saying to write "one sentence per line" only _while_ you are writing/editing. He says this is "for your eyes only", and that you'll recombine into paragraphs afterwards.

I think the idea is that, if your sentence can stand up to the added scrutiny you'll give it while seeing it sitting all alone, then it is worth keeping. Otherwise it is a wasteful sentence.

Anyway, I do agree that the actual "one sentence per line" prose that is so pervasive on places like LinkedIn is awful.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#232

Post by Enginerrrd »

preseinger wrote: post #230

One sentence per line makes prose feel sanctimonious, even self-aggrandizing. I find this dude's writing un-readable for exactly this reason. All of his articles are like HTML versions of the Ducks Go Quack TED Talk [0]. I just roll my eyes. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s

I think the advice is still useful for editing. Personally, I'd add the extra step of re-consolidating the sentences into paragraphs after going through this editing phase though. That said, I do a lot of technical writing and I often find paragraphs with fewer sentences are my better written paragraphs.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#233

Post by blowski »

wongarsu wrote: post #114
TheFreim wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Two spaces after each sentence comes from typewriters, where it supposedly looked better. On computers it made sense in the time of monospaced fonts, but with "modern" fonts being able to control the amount of space behind punctuation it's largely redundant.

Except for when you want to do diffs at the end of a sentence.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#234

Post by misterprime »

latexr wrote: post #155
t-3 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading more is the best way to learn though. Having good examples to imitate and build off of make writing clear, engaging prose much easier. When my math teachers told me "just do the practice problems", I also thought they were idiots, but they were actually right...

> Reading more is the best way to learn though. It’s useless advice to a student asking for specific help. A cooking student asking “why is my rice always soggy” should hear “let’s start by examining how much water you’re using”, not “watch more cooking shows until you understand through osmosis”. The point of a teacher is to teach. If the only guidance they can muster is “consume more of what you’re trying to create…

Yes, not everyone can notice the important element of what they're witnessing, especially not a novice.

I've seen a lot of baseball and golf, and I still don't know how to even try to swing those things properly.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#235

Post by JoshCole »

ghaff wrote: post #212
JoshCole wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 part…

I believe you. Medium is the message is a term from media theory. It refers to the idea that messages aren't in a vacuum, but are shaped by where they are transmitted. Often that shape is a function of what the audience will find appealing. You can tie this sort of thing to bellman equations to get a mathematical grip on the effect.

It does exist. It can be as harmful as you think it is. Yet it isn't harmful everywhere - isn't the world at large without any variation. It is intimately tied to the environment you are in, because that environment produces the rewards. Different environment, different reward, different impact on your writing. The effect is local, not global.

Which means you get to have a superpower.

When you have a bad transformation that degrades thinking that makes the term "medium is the message" feel dangerous. So you get things like Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. I think your post is an example of the same type of fear. This focus - on the examples of times where things are negative - it misses the opportunity. Since messages are a function not of raw ideas, but of their audiences you have an incredible power. Choose the right audience. Set the expectation for evaluation in advance. Pick the medium that helps you to think clearly and makes it easy to be judged. Now, instead of being destroyed by your incentive environment, you get empowered by it.

Take a look at Amazon's writing culture for an example of that. Or more broadly, the many companies which chose to ban powerpoint for reasons which are fundamentally related to what I'm talking about. We're not worse at understanding writing than ever before. We're more advanced than ever before, because we stand atop the giants that came before us. Yet at the same time - we're not, because that too is local and not global. The future is often already here, but isn't evenly distributed.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#236

Post by [deleted] »

fragmede wrote: post #190
ketzu wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There is! If you're using Git, you can do git diff --word-diff to enable word mode, which is computationally more expensive, but computing power is cheap these days. There's also an "ignore whitespace" mode ( -w ), though that doesn't play well with Python.

[deleted]

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#237

Post by Semiapies »

kuhzaam wrote: post #231
preseinger wrote: post #230

One sentence per line makes prose feel sanctimonious, even self-aggrandizing. I find this dude's writing un-readable for exactly this reason. All of his articles are like HTML versions of the Ducks Go Quack TED Talk [0]. I just roll my eyes. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s

In his defense, he is saying to write "one sentence per line" only _while_ you are writing/editing. He says this is "for your eyes only", and that you'll recombine into paragraphs afterwards. I think the idea is that, if your sentence can stand up to the added scrutiny you'll give it while seeing it sitting all alone, then it is worth keeping. Otherwise it is a wasteful sentence. Anyway, I do agree that the actual "o…

At this point, I think it's wasted breath to try to respond to the people who skim over articles without comprehension (or who don't appear to read the articles at all) and who instead just respond to the title.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#238

Post by irq-1 »

fragmede wrote: post #190
ketzu wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There is! If you're using Git, you can do git diff --word-diff to enable word mode, which is computationally more expensive, but computing power is cheap these days. There's also an "ignore whitespace" mode ( -w ), though that doesn't play well with Python.

Cool! An example:

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all different. You are in a little maze of twisty passages, all different. You are in a little maze of twisting passages, all different.

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all different. You are in a[-little-] maze of twisty {+little+} passages, all different. You are in a[-little-] maze of [-twisting-]{+twisty little+} passages, all different.

You are in a {+little+} maze of twisty[-little-] passages, all different. You are in a little maze of twisty passages, all different. You are in a little maze of [-twisting-]{+twisty+} passages, all different.

You are in a {+little+} maze of [-twisty little-]{+twisting+} passages, all different. You are in a little maze of [-twisty-]{+twisting+} passages, all different. You are in a little maze of twisting passages, all different.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#239

Post by hinkley »

luhn wrote: post #209

One big advantage not mentioned in the article particularly relevant to this audience: git diffs (or your VCS of choice). One sentence per line means diffs will operate per-sentence, rather than per-paragraph. This way the diff can capture the restructuring of the paragraph (adding/removing/replacing a sentence), which gives much more insight than swapping out the paragraph wholesale. It also means minor changes (e.g…

I think we need to start changing this. In an era of language servers, perhaps our diff tools should be semantic instead of line based.

I get so tired of seeing diffs where I add a function and the diff shows that I added it inside the previous function instead of between them, because it starts the diff one line too early.

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