Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Writing one sentence per line

sive.rs

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 307 posts

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#61

Post by capableweb »

wheybags wrote: post #53

Slightly off topic, but a pet peeve of mine is how you don't get a real line break in markdown when you insert a newline. Sometime I want a line break without a vertical apace for a new paragraph, I can't be the only one here! I know I can normally just add a br tag, but that looks nasty when you read it as plain text.

That depends on the markdown implementation (like so many features). But most of them implement "two trailing spaces on previous line force line-break" so you can (in most places) do something like this:

    This is a paragraph with no linebreaks.
    
    This is a paragraph with
    one linebreak but without trailing spaces
    
    This is a paragraph with one  
    line break and trailing spaces on previous line
That will render correctly on GitHub and other places (meaning, when rendered, the first one has no line-breaks, the second one has no line-breaks but the third one does [select the full third example to see the trailing spaces])

Here is a demo of it in action: https://jbt.github.io/markdown-editor/#dY3RCYAwDET/M8VN4DQuE...

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#62

Post by dubya »

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.

Two spaces between sentences makes this easy, and should be just as easy a habit as one sentence per line.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#63

Post by eesmith »

Ensorceled wrote: post #41
pagutierrezn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Yes, and the hyperlink for "vary the lengths of our sentences" in the linked-to essay goes to another essay, by the same author - https://sive.rs/book/WritingTools - which includes that Gary Provost "tour de force".

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#64

Post by longrod »

For me context is very important. Separating out the sentences, although makes them stand on their own, often sounds discontinuous and jarring like a too long pause. Not to mention how awkward it looks on the page (if double spaced which I prefer).

That's not to say it's a bad technique. It might work for some, not for others. For me it doesn't.

I have found writing to be much like coding where if you think through the idea properly, writing to the end is not such a big problem. The main hurdles is getting stuck which is often an indicator of a poorly thoughtout idea.

The other thing that helps me escape the over-editting issue is putting my words down with as much brevity is possible. The more fluff there is, the harder it is to change. Simpler to read, simpler to edit.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#65

Post by supersrdjan »

One sentence per line can paralyze your writing. It invites you to over-scrutinize each line and lose sight of the whole. It's a view that's better suited for analysis than synthesis. So it's better for editing than composing.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#66

Post by trasz »

This is how man pages are written, and in the long run it’s really convenient. I’m guessing that’s also why it recently become the rule for FreeBSD documentation, after migrating from DocBook to AsciiDoc.

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#68

Post by [deleted] »

jstummbillig wrote: post #59
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.…

That's beautiful. To be fair, and are we not all about being fair around here, he explicitly states: > Not publishing one sentence per line, no. Write like this for your eyes only. On the other hand, I find it hard to believe that there should be no spillage between how you write and how you publish. For example, I found "How to live" unreadable partly because of what I suspect this style of writing did to the publis…

[deleted]

Re: Writing one sentence per line

#69

Post by _mattt »

elfrinjo wrote: post #38
black_puppydog wrote: post #2

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

Looks good - but I do not agree with > 3. A semantic line break SHOULD NOT alter the intended meaning of the text. That should be #1 MUST NOT

SemBr author here. I chose SHOULD NOT for this rule for a couple reasons: First, as an affordance for text with ambiguous or unknown meaning. Second, as a hedge against introducing new meaning unintentionally.

Adding a semantic line break inherently changes the relationship between words, and we can't always be sure about the intended meaning of text. If this were MUST NOT, then any modification would risk violating the spec.

Then again, this may be my own, idiosyncratic reading of RFC 2119. If you'd like to discuss this further, feel free to open an issue on the GitHub repo here: https://github.com/sembr/specification/issues

Post reply on HN