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Writing one sentence per line

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Re: Writing one sentence per line

#41

Post by Ensorceled »

pagutierrezn wrote: post #22
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.…

"We need to vary the lengths of our sentences. Sometimes short. Sometimes long."

The comment was a "yes, and" not a "no, but"

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#42

Post by michaelmior »

pointlessone wrote: post #4
michaelmior wrote: post #3

I 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.

Vim has built-in text object for sentences. It supports sentences spanning multiple lines.

Yes, but I still find it more convenient to have sentences on their own line. Vim's sentence text object does also not always correspond correctly to actual sentences.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#43

Post by michaelmior »

TheFreim wrote: post #12
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.

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. 0. https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Hooks

This would require accurately detecting the end of the sentence which is not an easy thing to do correctly consistently.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#44

Post by keewee7 »

Months ago I noticed that I was doing this because of a (bad?) coding habit. It meant that my writing was recognizable across multiple reddit and discussion board accounts I don't want to be associated with each other. I stopped Writing One Sentence per Line after that.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#45

Post by MrGilbert »

rpastuszak wrote: post #20

I 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 to…

There is a small typo on the start page:

"[...] to say istead of how you want to say it."

Instead is missing a "n". :)

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#46

Post by bloak »

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…

According to Wikipedia: "Dashes have been cited as being treated differently in the US and the UK, with the former preferring the use of an em dash with no additional spacing and the latter preferring a spaced en dash."

Though I prefer the spaced en dash myself, and I am in the UK, I think there's probably a lot of variation on both sides of the Atlantic.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#47

Post by [deleted] »

michaelmior wrote: post #43
TheFreim wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. 0. https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Hooks

This would require accurately detecting the end of the sentence which is not an easy thing to do correctly consistently.

[deleted]

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#48

Post by iLoveOncall »

keewee7 wrote: post #44

Months ago I noticed that I was doing this because of a (bad?) coding habit. It meant that my writing was recognizable across multiple reddit and discussion board accounts I don't want to be associated with each other. I stopped Writing One Sentence per Line after that.

Did you read the article? The author says to write with one sentence per line, not to publish with one sentence per line.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#49

Post by m4lvin »

ketzu wrote: post #7
michaelmior wrote: post #3

I 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.

git diff --word-diff

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#50

Post by an_ko »

wccrawford wrote: post #31
quickthrower2 wrote: post #25

Is this why HN joins consecutive lines? This is on line 2. And this is on line 4.

No, that's just how markdown works, and HN uses markdown.

HN does not use Markdown. Compare HN formatting options https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc to Markdown https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax
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