Where did one sentence paragraphs come from?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Here’s an example thread of a theme I believe is becoming more and more prevalent not only on the SDMB, but throughout the internets. congodwarf, I only used your thread as an example, I’m not trying to call you out or anything.

When did this phenomenon start?

You know. The one where people feel like a new paragraph is needed after each sentence or two.

My guess?

The news.

Among the many classes I took in my college career, several were print journalism classes. It’s pretty much SOP in print news to write such that each paragraph contains one, maybe two, thoughts.

Here’s a random example.

Here’s another..

Okay, enough of that. You get the idea. Am I on to something here, thinking that the news is to blame for this extraordinary waste of screen space? Or do people think that it will create some kind of dramatic impact on the reader, as if each line creates some sudden realization? Maybe when used sparingly. But for the post I sampled above (which is just one of many, again, not calling the OP out), I feel like it’s distracting to the actual content. It’s kind of ironic, as though the writer meant to make each sentence mean that much more, but in the end the reader is more distracted than anything.

Is it just me? Or has anyone else noticed this phenomenon? What’s up with that?

2

Especially when reading on a computer, big blocks of text can be hard to read through. Breaking things up into more digestible chunks makes it look more approachable. My personal opinion is that in the case of the news, readers want to be able to skim through the article and pick out the salient points, which is harder to do when a paragraph is 10 lines long.

3

I’ve noticed it, but I’m not bothered by it. Even in novels, I find large stretches of uninterrupted text less appealing than text that is broken up frequently. I’m sure some people do use it for dramatic effect, but for the most part I think it’s just to make reading Item X a bit easier.

But you could disagree with me.

I’m okay with that.

:wink:

4

Ditto the above. I used to write big chunky blocks-o-text, but after reading many SDMB posts, I often consciously emulate the style of very short paragraphs with a space in between. It is much more appealing visually, and so much easier to read quickly.

5

One-sentence paragraphs more likely derive from conversations. Take this:

“Must we always kill the people?”

That’s chosen at random from Huckleberry Finn.

Finn also has the following:

No quotes there at all.

6

I do it, because I’ve never learned how to properly paragraph. In addition, the Reply box is more narrow than the Post box – text that appears dense in the Reply box spreads out after you click Submit.

The above paragraph is almost four lines in the Reply box, but it’s only two lines when it’s posted.

7

Preview

is

your

friend.

8

PowerPoint has gone one step further in damaging the layout and presentation of written communication in the office.
[ul][li]It has led some people to think a memo consists of bullet-pointed sentences [/li][li]Each bullet point must be ONE sentence, no more, no less[/li][li]If one has a lot to say and can’t be bothered to come up with a way to break it up into smaller logical pieces, and also for some reason doesn’t want to or actually can’t compose paragraphs of words rather than just write strings of text, then the solution is to make that single bullet-pointed sentence go on and on and on[/li][li]Verbs optional[/li][li]Short, direct sentences convey confidence![/li][li]Ellipsis can be used to indicate a problem without taking responsibility…?[/li][/ul]

Aaarrgh!

9

Another vote for not distracting, and in fact, easier to read on the screen.

Get used to it, OP, and quit yelling at the kids to get off your lawn. :slight_smile:

10

That’s exactly my take on it. My posts quite often look nicely paragraphed in the text reply box, then later, like an unintentional string of one-sentence paragraphs. I suppose that’s what the “preview post” button is for, among other things.

11

I think there are a couple of things going on here. First, as others have said, it improves readability to break up large blocks of text, which is the reason we have paragraphs in the first place.

Second, occasionally you want to set a sentence off by itself for emphasis. It can be overdone, but I think congodwarf’s use of the technique isn’t bad. Even in the latter half of that thread, where almost every sentence is a separate paragraph, it works, because much of it is, in effect, a dialog, where you pretty much have to do it.

Third, as for wasted space, the nature of text on a screen vs. text on a page comes into play here. On screen (at least in HTML), unlike on a printed page, one is virtually forced to separate paragraphs with a blank line. That’s because the standard technique for visually indicating a paragraph break in print – indentation – either doesn’t work at all, or is slightly tricky in HTML.
For instance, I just started a new paragraph without a blank line here, and added a few blank spaces to indent it. Most browsers will ignore those spaces, so depending on the size of your screen and the width of your browser window, this paragraph may not appear separate at all from the previous one. The blank space at the end of the previous paragraph – if there is any on your screen – is the only sign of the break.

So a body of text on screen will usually have much more white space than it would typically have in print, since separating graphs with blank lines is relatively rare on the printed page.

Finally, and I believe this applies to the news stories you linked to, and many others I’ve seen, it seems to be standard practice at many online news sources to put a <br> (break) tag at the end of every sentence. If the original article had paragraphs of many sentences, this destroys them. It may just be a matter of sloppy and inappropriate application of HTML coding to material created for print, or it may arise from a sense that computer users have short attention spans and need their info in smaller chunks. (There is a certain amount of truth to this.) I find Web articles composed entirely of one-sentence paragraphs very annoying.

But used sparingly and consciously, the technique can be effective.

12

What everyone else said. A huge block of text is harder on the eyes (especially ancient old granny eyes like mine). I always appreciate when someone breaks up big posts into smaller 1-3 sentence paragraphs.

13

I don’t think it’s a modern internet-driven phenomenon. Haven’t newspapers pretty much always done that? I’m fairly sure journalistic standards call for the lede to be a single twenty-five to thirty word sentence, and that’s not new.

Short paragraphs are easier to read. If you’re going for literary ‘feel’, obviously it’s not a good idea. But if you’re simply trying to convey information, shorter paragraphs make it easier.

14

I think it’s a great development. I’m much more likely to read a long post if it’s broken up that way (as appropriate, of course).

15

Want me to not read your post? Run 15 or 20 lines together into a single long paragraph. I’ll pass on the eye strain and the brain strain and glide right over it.

16

Years back, I was an active part of the community of users of the Hewlett-Packard 200LX palmtop, a nice little MS-DOS 5.0-based machine that ran for weeks on two AA batteries. The screen was a 640x200 CGA greyscale display, so it was quite a bit wider than it was tall.

At some point, somebody came out with Vertical Reader, a program that let you read texts by turning the machine sideways and holding it like a paperback book. It was supposed to make reading easier by breaking long wide sentences and paragraphs into much shorter columns of text, sort of like newspaper columns.

It was pretty cool … and it did seem to make reading easier, really. I suspect breaking up long paragraphs into short paragraphs of a few sentences each works similarly. It definitely does vastly improve readability, and makes it a lot easier to keep your place if you have to look away for something.

17

Long ago, when people wrote on steam-powered typewriters, in the early 1960s, I was taught about paragraphs. One of the rules was that a paragraph should be entirely about the same subject, or the same group of thoughts. When you, the writer, move on to another idea, you start another paragraph. If you don’t have much to say about that idea, your paragraph might be as short as one sentence. It’s not a problem, it is proper English writhing. English, that is, as it is taught in the US. We know the Queen’s English (of course she is!), but we say things differently here. :wink:

18

English writhing, ha!

19

You can “blame” newswriters for this technique of clarity in writing if you want; we prefer the word “credit.”

20

It’s a John Lennon joke.