[HN Gopher] Writing one sentence per line ___________________________________________________________________ Writing one sentence per line Author : Tomte Score : 690 points Date : 2022-06-20 09:25 UTC (13 hours ago) (HTM) web link (sive.rs) (TXT) w3m dump (sive.rs) | enriquto wrote: | beautiful html, indeed! | mixedmath wrote: | I write a lot of LaTeX and articles. I _sort of_ do this, except | that I also really want reasonable line lengths. Each sentence | starts on its own line, but I also hard wrap at 80 characters. I | have a completely different set of editing tidbits for writing | equations. | luhn wrote: | 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. typo | fixes) will only add+delete a single sentence, making it much | easier to identify what has actually changed from one commit to | the next. | | I take this a step further and will often split out a single | sentence into a clause per line, but this is a judgement call | rather than a hard and fast rule. | hinkley wrote: | 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. | emmelaich wrote: | Have you tried patience diff? | | See `git help diff` | dahfizz wrote: | Yes! I find `git diff` to be the most annoying thing about | git. I can be pretty forgiving of the clunky UX, but the diff | output is just wrong. | | People often say of git, "The porcelain is bad but the | plumbing is good". The opposite is true for digging, IMO. | sangnoir wrote: | Fortunately, git permits the use of external difftools. One | can easily configure git to use their preferred semantic | diff tool and git wouldn't even care. The plumbing is | excellent. | Groxx wrote: | Debuggers and stack traces too. _Logic_ is not line-based. | | When you get a NPE on a line containing `thing.method(x.y.z, | q(), w.e().rty())`, which item is it on? Type information is | insufficient, there could be multiple of the same thing on | the same line. | | Some debuggers are smarter ("step to cursor" sometimes goes | to in-line locations), but many are not, and most languages | I've seen will give you precise compile-time error locations, | but at runtime all you get is _lines_. Lines suck. | btgeekboy wrote: | Aside, I'm really excited to move to a newer JDK: | https://openjdk.org/jeps/358 | FullyFunctional wrote: | It's mentioned by Mihail Milchev in comment #13. I say that | exactly because this is the reason I've been doing this for | years myself. | majormajor wrote: | Many GUI diff tools will do this neatly regardless of | whitespace, FWIW, so this hasn't been a motivator for me for | code or text. | davnn wrote: | I write one sentence per line as well, but use line wrapping to | make it more readable during writing. Reading long sentences on a | single line is unpleasant imho. | | I'll try switching from line wrap to full display to get a better | picture of the overall structure. | | If the structure is easy to recognize I would probably prefer a | simple model that tells me a good line length for the current | line I'm in, e.g. a simple writing plugin for the editor of | choice. | vishkk wrote: | "Words are not forms of a single word. | | In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts. | | The world must be measured by eye." | | - Wallace Stevens | bee_rider wrote: | It is the easy way to do things when writing LaTeX in vim. | lqet wrote: | I started doing this mostly for cleaner commits in version | control systems. After a while I also noticed it made the writing | more concise. It's much easier to spot redundant "filler" | sentences. | abhayhegde wrote: | Similar advice was given by a famous VC, Tomasz Tunguz, a few | years ago: https://tomtunguz.com/writing-separate-lines/ | drewg123 wrote: | Just please, for the love of god, don't do it in slack. Nothing | annoys me more than a colleague writing a long slack message when | I'm AFK, and having my watch buzz like an angry bee when they hit | one carriage return (and send a new slack message) every 10 | seconds. | Beltalowda wrote: | You should really be angry at Slack and not your colleagues. | There are loads of ways to prevent this like sending at most | one alert per user per minute (if message is unread). It's not | rocket science. | | Most times when loads of people are "doing it wrong" then it's | the technology that is at fault, and not the people. | DawsonBruce wrote: | Over the past year I've disabled all Slack notifications and | the result is increased focus while I'm writing some code or | an email. All the messages will be queued up regardless if | I'm being notified (and disrupted) often. Perhaps give it a | try! | drewg123 wrote: | Yes, I'm angry at slack. No other messaging system I've used | does this.. | eCa wrote: | Personally, I have mapped 'send' to cmd+enter, to avoid | accidentally sending too soon. Also, to make it behave | similarly within a code block as without. | lo5 wrote: | One of the problems with Slack/Discord desktop clients is that | the message area (center column) tends to be far too wide on HD | monitors (1200px+), making it difficult to read[1] anything | that hasn't been manually line-wrapped. | | [1] https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability | secondcoming wrote: | Joke's on you for connecting your watch to Slack. | drewg123 wrote: | Sadly, I have no choice. I have a Garmin connected to an | iPhone. Even when I disable most notifications for an app, it | will still hit my watch. | | On Android, I could filter out which apps could notify the | watch, on ios, it seems Garmin has not been able to do that. | avgcorrection wrote: | Ctrl+Return | amake wrote: | \\(;D;)/ | | > be me | | > write one sentence per line | | > looks like greentext | | > mfw | swamp40 wrote: | Then they accuse you of reddit spacing. | 3qz wrote: | This is awful. It's the LinkedIn writing style and I can't look | at it without being reminded of all the shitposting that "thought | readers" do. | | Thoughts? | jyriand wrote: | I don't think it's awful. As he says you shouldn't publish your | text that way. In editing phase you will merge one line | sentences into paragraphs. | matwood wrote: | I'm not really a fan of 1 line per sentence _as the default_ , | but agree with more breaks. Also know your audience. My default | structure is: | | - Ask for what I want/why did I sent this email. | | - Explanation why using logical breaks. | | Which usually means I write my email, take the last line and | make it first. | | If I'm emailing a technical colleague I'll include more | details. CEO, 1 line bullet points. | mirrorlake wrote: | My criticism is that nearly the whole page is the comment | section. The article itself is very short--pasted into an | editor, ~200 words excluding titles. Perhaps putting every | sentence on its own line also inflates an author's sense of how | long their article is. | dchest wrote: | Why do you need a longer article for such a simple idea? | zaps wrote: | Agree | MengerSponge wrote: | This is a good habit if you write LaTeX documents, particularly | with collaborators. It's much easier to diff a file where each | sentence has its own line! | dilap wrote: | If that's too much trouble, just write your essay as a series of | tweets. Similar focussing effect. | | (And part of why I think the essay-as-tweet thread is so | popular.) | clord wrote: | This is my primary objection to using 80 columns everywhere. | Markdown specifically is a painful place to require it, but also | latex and HTML. For source code, 80-col works out ok most of the | time since "sentences" are relatively short, but even there I | prefer to use more semantic line breaks when the style guide or | formatting tool does not omit them. | pauljonas wrote: | Jose Saramago would hate this. | hammock wrote: | Most news articles are written one sentence per line. | | You might not have ever realized this fact because the character | length of a typical line is so short, both in a columnar | newspaper and on an ad-ridden website. | cb321 wrote: | Most writing style rules are context-dependently apt. The quote | by Disruptive_Dave of Gary Provost rings true for artistic | writing. Sentence length limits are more helpful for technical | writing like papers/documentation, with its many side-details - | just as a complexity control. | | Either way, though, for sentence source formatting, sentences on | line boundaries also help version control systems since a diff | shows the delta on a per sentence basis. Note that this is | _slightly_ different than one per line - it is more integer | number of lines per sentence since some are multi-line. Same | ethos, though. | kwelstr wrote: | James Joyce best advice? :-O | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | If what you're writing gets rendered as markdown (i.e. a readme | on github), you can actually publish as one-sentence-per-line, | because the markdown parser will make them into a paragraph for | you. | HeavyStorm wrote: | I cannot disagree more profoundly with the author. Write in a | very different way from which you read? From how texts are | formatted in general? | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | I used to do this all the time, when I worked for a Japanese | company. | | They used to translate my emails, "in-place," so this allowed the | translators to insert a line of Kanji characters, below each of | my lines. | | It also taught me to be frugal in my content, but you'd never | know it, reading my stuff, these days... | dnpp123 wrote: | It's also one of the first rule I've learned when communicating | professionally in Korean. | | Write the _exact_ same paragraph, one with an EOL between each | sentence, one without. | | Natives always understood the paragraph with EOL. Personally I | didn't see any difference but -\\_(tsu)_/- | | I think it's true all the time, but it shows a lot more when | you speak in a language where the grammar is super different | from what you're used too. | Mageek wrote: | I absolutely love doing this. I often write in LaTeX, where new | lines don't effect the typeset output. It is so much easier to | see git diffs, comment sentences out, move sentences, identify a | sentence by its line number, etc. as well. | myfonj wrote: | Reading this makes me think it might be generally beneficial to | finally convey the semantics of sentence boundaries to the | resulting output as well, like some `<p><span>Sentence #1.</span> | <span>Sentence #2.</span>` wrappers: it would introduce | possibility (for author or user) to break it into lines again or | apply any other styling, and might improve interaction (think: | _select single sentence_ ), or some further processing or | contextual styling (think _" make all single-sentence paragraphs | stand out"_.) | | Strange there is no truly "semantic" way to mark-up sub-paragraph | chunk of text in HTML; all 'inline' tags are intended for "words" | or for including several sentences at once (like emphasis, quote, | code, sample, mark, etc.). I have some murky memory I've read | some discussion explaining that the concept of "sentence" is | quite problematic and in no way universal, but cannot dig it up | now. | | (This comment started as _But how are we supposed to sneak our | beloved double spaces between sentences in the output now?_ semi- | pun, but after all, this post-processing idea answers it.) | dang wrote: | 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. | ngrilly wrote: | I'm doing that almost systemically when writing Markdown for | similar reasons to the blog post author. | longrod wrote: | 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. | hansword wrote: | You might have missed a part of the article, where author says | they write single line sentences as 'code', but both Markdown | and HTML automatically turn concescutive sentences into | paragraphs, unless you (using a blank line or <p>) explicitly | end a paragraph. | | > Not publishing one sentence per line, no. Write like this for | your eyes only. | | (Edit: added quote from article) | rvnx wrote: | This is perfect in the era of fast-food media like TikTok or | shorts. We don't need long sentences, 140-chars are enough. | supersrdjan wrote: | 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. | rpastuszak wrote: | 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 too, but even if I was the | only user, I'd still be quite happy with it, since I suck at | sticking with habits :) | | Check it out! | | https://enso.sonnet.io | napolux wrote: | I like it! | ryan-duve wrote: | I just gave this a whirl and I wanted to let you know it's very | fun! For anyone else that wants to give the demo a shot, here's | the direct link: | | https://write.sonnet.io/ | MrGilbert wrote: | There is a small typo on the start page: | | "[...] to say istead of how you want to say it." | | Instead is missing a "n". :) | rpastuszak wrote: | Good timing, I took today off to do some (late) spring | cleaning. Fixed, thanks. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | I totally agree. My approach is to just turn of the monitor. | reirob wrote: | I made a colorscheme for vim that uses same color for font | and background. Use it sometimes when I need to write long | confusing thoughts. It's quite a nice experience, the | sentences turn out to be similar to the way I would speak, | but still with more thought and deepness. | edjw wrote: | Similar idea I made a few years ago. A text editor with no | editing allowed and lets you export to Word/MD/HTML for later | editing | | https://first-draft.netlify.app | rpastuszak wrote: | Sweet! If you don't mind sharing, did anyone donate through | ko-fi? | | I think there's still potential in writing tools with decent | UX (iA Writer and such) and I know that some people wanted to | pay me for Enso, so I'm trying to figure out the best course | of action: either charge premium for a premium native app or | let the people chip in. Paid products tend to get more | valuable feedback. | edjw wrote: | I just checked and nobody did. I didn't really promote it. | Might have helped if I had said what I might do with the | money to improve it? | javajosh wrote: | _> I approach this by separating writing from editing. Just | keep writing, ignore the typos, self-censorship or formatting | and keep moving._ | | You've (re)discovered the old adage: write drunk, edit sober. | rpastuszak wrote: | Close but, no cigar. Code sober, debug drunk! | | https://sonnet.io/posts/code-sober-debug-drunk/ | [deleted] | [deleted] | MrDunham wrote: | Here's my biggest critique of Enso: It's not very easy to send | myself a reminder when I'm back at my computer to use it. | | Content: i'm currently on my mobile phone and I absolutely | adore the idea of Enso (funny enough I'm currently holding & | feeding my infant named Enzo). I would like to write with it | and try it when I don't have an infant on my lap but that | requires me remembering it and looking it up when back on my | laptop and ready to write something. | | I added my email on the mobile sign-up but frankly I don't | really want a mobile app as 60% of my long-form mobile writing | is done via voice to text and edited later. What I'd like is a | "remind me via email to give Enso a try" signup that says "hey, | this is a reminder to try Enso... The flow focused, low editing | app for creative writing" or something like that. | SamBam wrote: | You want a sign-up on the site that just sends you an email | and tells you to use it? | | You could also just send yourself an email, you know. | | Or, if you're fancy, use a to-do list that you can access | both on your mobile and your computer. | | (To be fair, I recall the brain-fog that comes with having an | infant.) | rpastuszak wrote: | Fair enough, but I still think the user could benefit from | a gentle nudge here:) | rpastuszak wrote: | > remind me via email to give Enso a try | | I like this. Thanks! Email notifications nowadays are a bit | of a pain to set up, since they need to contain the physical | address of the sender in the footer, so this is a piece of | work I _always_ keep postponing. I was even considering | dropping that form completely. Maybe I could generate a | calendar event with a reminder instead? This way I won't have | to store any data about the user and I could probably piggy | back on the phone UX when it comes to reminders. Just | thinking aloud here. | | > as 60% of my long-form mobile writing is done via voice to | text and edited later. | | Yeah, your description matches my own usage patterns. And, | I've reached a similar conclusion. Mobile-first Enso would | probably have two modes: keyboard + dictation. | kstenerud wrote: | When I write for myself, it's all over the place. Mostly it's | short phrases, unordered lists and the odd diagram, followed by | lines of --- to separate thought arenas. All of these are | fragments of ideas that I feel will probably be important to the | finished piece. Usually about half of them actually are. | | I just continue writing down thoughts as they occur, any time | they happen during the day or during periods of concentration on | the piece itself. If the current thought is not an extension of | the last thing I wrote, I make a new line and start the new | thought. | | Here's a small section of draft notes for a technical article | that I never published: Streaming only for top | level args, not deeply nested.... ? - With set of files, | need lots of streams of data. -- How to get metadata when | ordering not guaranteed? | ------------------------------------ Is there a way | to evaluate, send data from smallest piece to biggest piece? | - Walk the tree, assign weights to branches? If a | hierarchy contains multiple big data pieces, how to tell the | receiving function? Some method to pump in top level | args X items at a time? - 1 item at a time for non-array, | x bytes at a time for array | ----------------------------------- | | Every so often I'll draw another line and summarize everything in | a way that succinctly discusses what I'm writing about in note | form. Then I draw another line and start writing notes again. | | Eventually, the summary notes start to feel solid in my mind, at | which point I turn them into prose and then start embedding my | notes between the paragraphs, turning them into sentences only | once I feel I know where they should go in the overall piece. | Once the notes finally disappear from the prose, I have my first | draft. | swamp40 wrote: | I have to do this in my emails. Most people just ignore the | second and third sentences in a paragraph. No idea why, drives me | crazy - but this does help. | | You can tell they don't read them because they ask questions that | were answered in them. | afterburner wrote: | Although the article does mention this is supposed to be an | organization trick for your eyes only: | | > Not publishing one sentence per line, no. Write like this for | your eyes only. HTML or Markdown combine separate lines into | one paragraph. | crayboff wrote: | Ironically it seems he may have only read the beginning of | the article and skimmed past the rest. | ghaff wrote: | >No idea why | | Because that tends to be how people skim. | | If the first sentence of a paragraph doesn't catch their | attention in some way, they subconsciously assume that the rest | of the paragraph (which is presumably related) doesn't need to | be read. | hinkley wrote: | Which is why "don't bury the lede" is such important advice. | | Also please rehearse what you would say to your family if you | got into a car wreck and they wanted to check you out at the | hospital versus "mom is going into surgery for massive | hemorrhaging." | | "Hey son, we're okay, but we got into a bad fender bender and | we're getting checked out at Hoskin's Hospital. The car is | dead so can you come pick us up, maybe bring X and Y and have | your sister check on the cats?" | | Is a way shorter moment of sheer terror than switching around | the sentence fragments at the beginning. Also if you're a | boss having an unscheduled meeting with someone, stalling the | agenda is just torturing the other person. | Groxx wrote: | This is all also useful advice for helping people deal with | notifications for work. They might see "@xyz can help you | with this..." and miss "... when they have time next week". | | Help people triage. Make the urgency clear in the first | couple words. Don't just send "hi" and then wait for a | response, nor "X is down" when someone else is already on | it and you're just giving them an FYI. | warmwaffles wrote: | Why would you do that in your emails? | | /s | dctoedt wrote: | > _Most people just ignore the second and third sentences in a | paragraph._ | | The military expression is BLUF - Bottom Line Up Front. (It | works for paragraphs as well as for entire documents.) | golergka wrote: | Its also very comfortable when you're using vim or vim-emulation | plugin in another editor. | black_puppydog wrote: | Or, with a bit more nuance: Semantic line breaks | | https://sembr.org/ | chrismorgan wrote: | > _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 | without inserting a space, but I've been trying to avoid nuance | in rules. But I definitely do want to put line breaks after em | dashes sometimes.) | lifthrasiir wrote: | If you are using Markdown you can use an HTML comment--<!-- | | -->like this. I'm okay with that because there are some edge | cases [1] in CommonMark that I absolutely need to use one | anyway. | | [1] https://talk.commonmark.org/t/foo-works-but-foo- | fails/2528 | bloak wrote: | 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. | nequo wrote: | Useless info but in LaTeX, you could write %\n instead of \n | to prevent the surrounding whitespace. | avgcorrection wrote: | A hairline space between em-dashes can be quite visually | pleasing (in American writing; British uses full spaces | around en-dashes). Like what Medium does. | | But in that case I would prefer that the source text still | has no spaces. Such things can be added in postprocessing. | elfrinjo wrote: | 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 | _mattt wrote: | 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 | DarkWiiPlayer wrote: | Came here to say this too. Huge fan of semantic line breaks, | both for VCS and for the eyes (makes it easier to parse the | structure of a document) | joegahona wrote: | I read Ken Rand's "10% Solution"[0] in ~2001 on the | recommendation of longtime Washington Post copy chief Bill Walsh, | who died a few years ago[1]. I can't believe how much of its | advice has stuck with me and how much it has helped me. Highly | recommended for anyone who wants to optimize their writing. | | [0] https://www.amazon.com/10-Solution-Ken-Rand- | ebook/dp/B07FC7G... | | [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/bill-walsh-copy- | editor-... | michaelmior wrote: | 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. | avgcorrection wrote: | I mean, I'm happy that this was not a yet another | sysadmin/programmer-as-writer justification (adjusting one's | whole workflow based on the handful of terminal programs that | one uses). | | EDIT: Meaning that I think this kind of justification is more | interesting since it is meant to affect the process of writing | itself. | michaelmior wrote: | I won't say I'm not guilty of that too sometimes. Although I | don't think it's so bad. If there's a tool that you really | like using that can be adapted to work in a variety of | scenarios, I can understand the justification. For some of | the things I do, there probably are better tools for the job, | but if I can make use of existing tools I already know how to | use well, even if in a suboptimal way, that might be more | worthwhile to me than investing in learning something new. | avgcorrection wrote: | Yep, indeed. Whatever works. | ketzu wrote: | > 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. | fragmede wrote: | 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] | irq-1 wrote: | 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. | m4lvin wrote: | git diff --word-diff | [deleted] | TheFreim wrote: | 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 | michaelmior wrote: | This would require accurately detecting the end of the | sentence which is not an easy thing to do correctly | consistently. | [deleted] | dubya wrote: | Two spaces between sentences makes this easy, and should | be just as easy a habit as one sentence per line. | avgcorrection wrote: | I used to write like that (even though I'm not an | American or a former typewriter) but pressing double | space got annoying after a while. :-) | kadoban wrote: | That's about as unnatural for most people as newline per | sentence, and has the added risk that you'll accidentally | publish like that and it'll look weird. One per line | would be _much_ harder to accidentally publish because | it's more obvious. | BeFlatXIII wrote: | 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. | TheFreim wrote: | 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 I can't see the two | spaces. | avgcorrection wrote: | 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). | jhardy54 wrote: | 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.... | yellowapple wrote: | Those authorities on "good typography" are wrong. They | prioritize text looking pretty over text conveying | information clearly and accurately, and the world is | worse off because of it. Two spaces as the sentence | delimiter is superior in every way that actually matters, | and I will die on that hill. | harshreality wrote: | 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? | sam_bristow wrote: | Maybe I'm just being slow this morning, but isn't the | fullstop the indication of the end of the sentence? | | What extra information is encoded by fullstop + 2 spaces? | andreareina wrote: | The period also indicates the previous word was | abbreviated, or can be used in an ellipsis, probably | other situations that aren't top of mind right now. | avgcorrection wrote: | Interesting. I definitely respect Butterick's opinions on | typography. | dubya wrote: | 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. | wongarsu wrote: | 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. | blowski wrote: | Except for when you want to do diffs at the end of a | sentence. | kadoban wrote: | 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. | ghaff wrote: | 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. | usr1106 wrote: | 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 | earth_walker wrote: | 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 there an early version of Word's spell-check-on-the- | fly that underlined double spaces, or am I miss- | remembering? | ghaff wrote: | >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. | earth_walker wrote: | 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. | euroderf wrote: | I've seen two spaces listed as a "resume don't-do" cos it | marks you as an oldster. | yellowapple wrote: | My resume is in LaTeX, so they literally would never | know. | arathore wrote: | Exactly, I mostly write in Latex and one-sentence-per-line | makes so much sense for that. | pointlessone wrote: | Vim has built-in text object for sentences. It supports | sentences spanning multiple lines. | michaelmior wrote: | 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. | TremendousJudge wrote: | 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. | kadoban wrote: | > 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? | ghaff wrote: | 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). | bertil wrote: | I remember struggling to write essays when I was in highschool. | Well, _I_ was fine, but my teachers insisted it was long-winded | gibberish. Concerned, my grand'mother told me: "Ask Sonia" I knew | she was her friend, and they liked to argue a lot, but I was a | bit confused by the advice. | | It turns out, editing was Sonia's job: she was the head reader at | a very prestigious publishing house, meaning she was giving notes | and feedback to very famous authors, including four Nobel Prize | laureates. You kind of have to know what you are doing when you | are sending a manuscript full of red in the margins and the | person can respond "I've got a Nobel Prize and you don't." She | definitely had the icey stare to match. | | Oddly, her advice was incredibly simple, and fitted in two very | short pieces: | | * Subject, Verb, Complement -- in that order. If you see two | verbs, but a period between them. | | * Things are confusing if you don't put them in order: start by | the beginning, find the widest piece of context that explain the | rest. | | I don't apply her rules every time, but for every technical | document, every time I've tried, it's been night and day. | | That typographic argument is really resonating with me. | drivers99 wrote: | > find the widest piece of context that explain the rest. | | Sounds interesting. Can you explain this? | bertil wrote: | French, especially academic writing, can have a lot of | subordinate clauses: | | > I asked the person _who_ was standing there. | | It has even more oratory precautions: | | > We can argue that this result, that was seemingly proven | wrong by a previous analysis, appear to be a consequence of a | previous attempt that was investigated by my esteemed | colleagues, who have looked into the author and found out | that they ... | | If you want to split between each verb as they are, you end | up with sentences that are in the wrong order: | | > I asked a person. That person was standing there. | | > We can argue that this result appear to be a consequence of | a previous attempt. This result was seemingly proven wrong by | a previous analysis. The attempt was investigated by my | esteemed colleagues. My colleagues have looked into the | author. They found out that the author... | | So you are better off by thinking: what comes first? The | person was standing there _before_ I asked, and I asked them | because they were standing, so that information should come | first: | | > A person was standing there. I asked them. | | Further, most actions in a chain of preposition explain a | decision: those should come first. | | > This result was surprising. Sceptics wanted to verify it. | Their investigation concluded that the result was wrong. My | colleagues wanted to know more. They investigated the authors | of the result. They found out... | | The outcome is a bit drier. The benefit is that if one | sentence is longer, or an adjective inverted, or a complement | put at the begining of the sentence, it's more striking. That | helps attracting attention to what matters, selectively. | | For academic writing, you don't need as many oratory | precautions because you can report other findings without | having to validate them as yours: you present them all as | facts on equal footing. If you agree, it's implied from the | lack of criticism. If you disagree, it's on you to prove why | _after_ presenting the work fairly. For that, you have to | include the key aspect to support you criticism in your first | presentation. | | I can also give the impression that you are just moving | forward without a clear goal: "This happened, in particular | then this happened, then this reacted..." which is why you | want to summarise your point early: people will see the | arguement getting closer to its goal, knowing what that goal | is. | throwawayHN378 wrote: | Been doing this forever but not for a particular reaso. | danielvaughn wrote: | I always do this for markdown, makes it waaay easier to edit, | reason about, cut, etc. | elfrinjo wrote: | I completely agree. Using one line per sentence (and soemtime | more lines when the sentence is longer) makes it way easier to | structure the text. Markdown and are perfectly able to fit the | text to the device you are reading on. It also makes version | control and diffs more usable. | | However, I can also agree that this style might be not suitable | for non-technical writing. | trasz wrote: | 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. | bronikowski wrote: | As a fan of Proust I feel he already did that but not in the way | Derek intended. | | It's more like "One sentence per page(s) -- | https://nathanbrixius.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/the-five-long... | generalpf wrote: | Is this what inspires LinkedIn engagement hackers? | jvanderbot wrote: | If you've ever had LaTeX docs in version control, you'll quickly | appreciate this approach as well, since VCS is much more sane | when dealing with lines. | edpichler wrote: | It is an advice for Internet only, right? | quickthrower2 wrote: | Is this why HN joins consecutive lines? This is on line 2. | | And this is on line 4. | wccrawford wrote: | No, that's just how markdown works, and HN uses markdown. | an_ko wrote: | HN does not use Markdown. Compare HN formatting options | https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc to Markdown | https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax | wccrawford wrote: | I'll concede that. | innocentoldguy wrote: | I write this way in Asciidoc, with a single line break between | sentences and two line breaks between paragraphs, since it | automatically compiles into normal paragraphs when I generate | PDFs or Word documents. It makes editing so much easier. | cjsawyer wrote: | I love the irony of using a two sentence opening paragraph to | sing the praises of not using paragraphs. | | Good advice though ;) | dandare wrote: | Maybe this is the right thread to ask for help: | | I am looking for resources on the technical aspects of creative | writing. Like this post. Or as mentioned below, on using semantic | line breaks https://sembr.org/ | | I am trying to improve my creative writing style but most what I | find on Google is about the creative aspect and not about the | technical aspect. | Disruptive_Dave wrote: | 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. And I use sentences of medium | length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I | will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a | sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus | of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals- | sounds that say listen to this, it is important. | | So I write with a combination of short, medium, and long | sentences. Create a sound that pleases the reader's ear. Don't | just write words. Write music. | | (Gary Provost) | jstummbillig wrote: | 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 published | product. | pgcj_poster wrote: | I tend to write prose source code | | with line breaks after grammatical units. | | I've noticed that since I started doing so, | | I've been writing longer paragraphs and sentences, | | since the line breaks in the source do for me | | what paragraph and sentence breaks do for the reader. | | It's something I have to pay attention to. | kadoban wrote: | Writing like this works really well for vim and git as | well. It makes it easy to delete/move/edit lines (eg with: | d2j), and then in git the diffs are by default formatted | nicely and contain only sentences. | | Though if you wanted to get fancy you could use other vim | movement commands (yank the next 2 sentences), I still | think it's easier using lines. | SamBam wrote: | GP was echoing the article's point that writing one sentence | per line lets you notice, and vary, your line lengths. | jstummbillig wrote: | Ah. If that's the case (and I can see how it might be) I | misunderstood. Thanks. | [deleted] | xwowsersx wrote: | My favorite excerpt from that book! | HKH2 wrote: | Five word sentences are fine. The first paragraph is not; the | content itself is dull. Do it with useful sentences. | fknorangesite wrote: | Of course. Hence | | > But several together become monotonous. | joedavison wrote: | The semicolon is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that | sentence. That makes your example 5-10-5 words instead of | 5-5-5-5. Try using a period instead of semicolon and hear how | it sounds. | HKH2 wrote: | What difference does it make? They are multiples of five. | Are they okay to him? I doubt that is so. He dislikes | chunks of five. He was not prescribing semicolons. That | would still bother him. | fknorangesite wrote: | I think you might be missing the forest for the trees, | here. It's not about five-word sentences; it's about the | repetition making the paragraph as a whole monotonous and | robotic - something you demonstrated very well in this | very comment. | [deleted] | pagutierrezn wrote: | "We need to vary the lengths of our sentences. Sometimes short. | Sometimes long." | Ensorceled wrote: | The comment was a "yes, and" not a "no, but" | eesmith wrote: | 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". | eddd-ddde wrote: | I'm gonna be honest, my mind got bored in the long sentence and | completely skipped like half the words. I think I'm just too | used to reading documentation and skipping 50% of the words so | I can see how to do something quicker. | OneLessThing wrote: | I had the same experience when my brain decided that I get | the point of the sentence and where it was going. Perhaps if | there was actual content in the sentence this wouldn't have | happened. | andruc wrote: | I wouldn't recommend consuming art like we do documentation. | gnulinux wrote: | I remember reading this as a child (maybe in elementary school) | and it affecting my writing. I have to admit, especially when | writing something technical, forgetting about this and focusing | on making small, easily-understandable sentences can help the | reader. (even though it's more boring) | wongarsu wrote: | A paragraph with just one 50-word sentence doesn't have | varied sentence length either ;) | | For technical writing, "no more than one thought per | sentence" works quite well in my opinion. Or at least it's a | good guideline to apply in the first pass of proofreading. | andai wrote: | I agree with no more than one thought per sentence in | general, though I have the opposite problem: it often takes | me several paragraphs to get a single thought across. So | the end result ends up being something like 0.1 thoughts | per sentence. | | I guess what I'm trying to get across is not a single | thought but a _perspective_ which requires some background | and context to appreciate, and I struggle with separating | out the essential from the incidental, and structuring it | for maximum engagement. | cseleborg wrote: | I struggle with this, too. I'm just very verbose. I try | to keep this piece of advice about working to shorten a | text in mind: it's done, not when there is nothing more | to add, but when nothing more can be removed. (Saint- | Exupery, I believe). It helps me a little bit. | andai wrote: | "Forgive me this long letter--I had not the time to make | it short." | marcosdumay wrote: | Technical text has an excuse to be boring and repetitive. The | content is king, clarity and lack of ambiguity are the next | most important things, and style is just a fourth place | contender. | | EDIT: I just want to point that differently from this thread, | the article is not about text style. | SkeuomorphicBee wrote: | Reading this makes me angry at all my school teachers for the | subjects of [my-native-language] and writing. | | It is such a simple technique, that makes such a huge impact on | ones writing, and yet no teacher bothered to teach it. I spent | all my school years writing monotonous essays of five-word | sentences. Week after week I would make another one, and I | could clearly see for myself that they were bad, I just | couldn't tell why. So when I asked my teachers for help, asking | "what is wrong with my writing?", "what am I missing?", all I | ever got back was a bad grade and the same useless tip: "just | read more". | | They might just as well have said to "draw the rest of the | fucking owl." | swyx wrote: | as they say: those who can't do, teach | bombcar wrote: | That is five words long. | yellowapple wrote: | So is that, my friend. | alar44 wrote: | They = idiots | coliveira wrote: | 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. | JoshCole wrote: | > 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 other literate society. | | We track statistics like reading comprehension and you can | look them up. I did. The source I found showed that every | state in the US I checked - with the exception of Michigan | (??) - has reading comprehension improve relative to the | year 2003. In some cases this improvement is by a notable | amount, in some cases not so notable. | | It seems unlikely to me that people now are worse at | reading and writing than people used to be. Writing is more | common now and reading is more common too. Once, | journalists wrote. Now everyone does. | ghaff wrote: | >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. | DiggyJohnson wrote: | I think you're both making good points in this thread. | I'm writing a non-fiction book in my spare time, and I've | had to face the fact that my default get-words-on-the- | page is _extremely_ flowery. | | Would it be possible for you share an example of your | prose that received this criticism? | JoshCole wrote: | 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. | t-3 wrote: | 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... | latexr wrote: | > 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", there's no point to having a class. | misterprime wrote: | 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. | Disruptive_Dave wrote: | Reading as a reader is kinda different than reading as a | writer. Different mind states. As a reader I'm getting lost | in a story, not picking up on writing styles and patterns. | You're not wrong. Just need the caveat of reading with the | intention (or partial intention) to pull yourself out of | the story and check out the architecture. | awestroke wrote: | Reading more is good, but what if the teacher had pointed | out the sentence length and told the student to start | reflecting on sentence length while reading? | strgcmc wrote: | Outside of classroom-style dedicated instruction, this | really does seem to be the best form of learning, i.e. a | semi-active/not-fully-passive approach. | | There is generally no "hack" that the student can use to | avoid having to read a lot of stuff, in order to learn | and especially to become an expert. What a student needs | to read, isn't necessarily textbooks or the traditional | orthodoxy of materials, but still there is undoubtedly a | lot of reading that must be done, to "get good" as they | say. | | That being said, for a teacher to GUIDE that reading, to | give some hints, pointers, themes, interconnections, | sequencing (start with X, then read Y to deepen your | knowledge of X), etc., is absolutely invaluable. | | To me, this seems like the Pareto-optimal 80/20 | breakdown, where 20% of the teacher's investment in time | and energy can get you 80% of the benefit of having | teaching at all (i.e. don't need a full curriculum or | full-time commitment to dedicated instruction, but do | need to spend some time/energy pointing the student in | various directions and giving them some ideas to think | about while reading). | Qub3d wrote: | This is all brushing up against the central theme of "Zen | and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", which approaches | its core thesis by dissecting the process of teaching | college students how to "write Quality". | Zababa wrote: | > When my math teachers told me "just do the practice | problems", I also thought they were idiots, but they were | actually right... | | Reading more would be reading problems. Doing practice | problems is equivalent to writing and having | someone/something point out if it's good or not. | blobbers wrote: | Some people are going to respond "reading more is the right | thing to do". | | As in: practice makes perfect. Observing a master, will make | you a master. | | But unless your eye or brain can detect what they're doing, | it can feel hopeless. | | Sometimes having it broken out like this really helps. I | found this amazing too! | | So really, perfect practice makes perfect. Or at least saves | time and avoids forming bad habits along the way. | riazrizvi wrote: | I'm curious, what language/country was that? | exysle wrote: | He is not saying short sentences are necessary, he is saying | that each sentence stands out with a newline, which means they | can be judged at an individual level. | rsfern wrote: | The authors second point is that the length of each sentence | also stands out. This helps you assess the flow of the | writing. | | I thought it was a useful point because I write with one line | per sentence, but had only considered the first advantage. | paulpauper wrote: | it makes no difference tbh how varied the sentence length is or | other aesthetic factors. nothing is reliably been shown to make | writing more successful. | jalino23 wrote: | 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 | keithalewis wrote: | I can highly recommend "The Heavenly City of the 18-th | Century Philosophers" by Carl Becker. | auxbuss wrote: | 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. | soheil wrote: | > The writing is getting boring. | | What is this obsession with writing not being boring? If you're | reading the passphrase to disarm a nuclear missile do you think | you might get bored halfway if the sentences are too long? | | I never understood why people insist on having short sentences. | Human thought does not come in a small pre-packaged short | sentence form. Some of the best philosophers wrote very long | sentences, look at Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kant. Let's not | dumb ourselves down by sacrificing rich, deep thoughts just | because our ADHD might kick in and we might get distracted by | the next YouTube cat video. | fknorangesite wrote: | > What is this obsession with writing not being boring? | | This may come as a surprise, but sometimes a piece of writing | is not technical documentation. | novalis78 wrote: | The most fascinating experience is trying to understand | Schopenhauer in German and then reading the same paragraph in | an English translation. It feels pre-digested or narrowed down | to one possible interpretation. | | A professor at college tried to hone into us the short-precise | nature of English as a cultural phenomenon and considered the | paragraph long highly artistic German texts a reflection of a | culture that felt the need to impress. | | Still to this day, I admire both: the sophisticated elaborate | construction of long flowery sentences that strain your memory | as well as the ultra-concise that brilliantly clear short | (often technical) prose. | [deleted] | who-shot-jr wrote: | This is my sentence. | | There are many like it, but this one is mine. | wnoise wrote: | Many comments have mentioned both the benefits to diffing, and | various --word-diff options. Unfortunately word-merge tools are | harder to find. You can of course use smudge/clean filters to | unwrap and rewrap text, but those are quite fiddly to set up and | fragile in practice. | | It isn't the main point of https://github.com/neilbrown/wiggle , | but it can actually diff and merge on a word basis. A git merge | driver is fairly easy to set up. | mic47 wrote: | And it makes git diff pretty. | nazzacodes wrote: | *more functional | gist wrote: | > My advice to anyone who writes: Try writing one sentence per | line. I've been doing it for twenty years, and it improved my | writing more than anything else. | | Who is the judge of 'it improved my writing more than anything | else'? What was the 'anything else' for that matter. | | This is a particular writing style just like Aaron Sorkin has a | particular style. Some people like that style to others it's | annoying. | | https://thescriptlab.com/features/10569-5-secrets-to-aaron-s... | | > We sometimes write sentences that don't need to exist. Hidden | in a paragraph, we might not notice. Standing on their own, we | notice. Delete any sentence not worthy of its own line. | | If you proofread and review what you write why would you not | notice? | pessimizer wrote: | This isn't suggesting that the things that you publish be one | sentence per line. It's suggesting that you write one sentence | per line, polish the individual sentences (and question their | right to exist at all) then edit them into paragraphs. You | might have assumed this assume this by noticing the fact that | the article has more than one sentence per line. | | > Who is the judge of 'it improved my writing more than | anything else'? | | Who do you think? Who wrote the article? The word 'my' might be | a hint. | | > What was the 'anything else' for that matter. | | Would you give him permission to describe _one_ practice he | adopted while writing without describing every single step he | 's made in learning how to write since he was a child? | gist wrote: | > Who do you think? Who wrote the article? The word 'my' | might be a hint. | | I am challenging how someone arrives at that conclusion if | they are the judge (which seems implied). Sivers gives | nothing at all to indicate - not even anecdotes - as backup | for the improvement. His statement is general and broad. | | Let's say he was instead describing writing he did for school | or for work. So before he applied his technique he was rated | or judged a certain way (grades, reviews). Then he started to | use the technique he describes. He then gets better grades or | reviews. In that case he concludes 'it improved my writing | more than anything else' (and I might still ask 'what are the | other things you tried that did not work'. But in this case | all he says (again) is a very broad and not in any way backed | up 'it improved my writing'. And he claims 'advice to anyone | who writes' he can't be serious using 'anyone' in that | 'polished' sentence other than to get people worked up over a | blog post and talking about it (which to be clear is a | technique that bloggers use) | | > Would you give him permission to describe one practice he | adopted while writing without describing every single step | he's made in learning how to write since he was a child? | | People read what others have written and critique. My guess | is that if he read my comment he might think that someone | thought a certain thing and wonder and then maybe he would | learn and/or make an adjustment. Not the reason I made my | comment but there is nothing that indicates he should not be | criticized or that others can't learn from the statements | that I made whether they agree or not with what I said. | | > It's suggesting that you write one sentence per line, | polish the individual sentences | | Again he is not even indicating when his technique matters. I | write every day (for sales) I get very good results (judged | by replies and results). In my case I don't have to polish | every sentence I write enough and have enough feedback that I | find that sometimes you don't even want to care that much | because that in itself (in certain situations) telegraphs | something. | | You don't think starting a post with this is a bit to broad: | | "My advice to anyone who writes: Try writing one sentence per | line." | | Seems very clear to me 'advice to anyone who writes' | seriously 'anyone'? | stewfortier wrote: | I think the spirit of this advice translates well to publishing | style, too. | | I get intimidated when I see big blocks of text. | | But take that same, intimidating block and thoughtfully break it | into short, punchier paragraphs and I'm in. | | Shorter paragraphs make it easier for me to skim and get a sense | of where something is going. They also give me more chances to | pause, catch my breath, and internalize what I'm reading. | | This is harder for me to do in a big block of text where I'm | afraid I'll lose my place if I divert my attention. | gjvc wrote: | just don't take this as "one sentence per paragraph" unless you | want to sound like a used-car salesman. | oever wrote: | It's like poetry. | nunez wrote: | this is actually really good advice. shorter paragraphs force you | to be concise, and concise is really good in short-attention-span | mediums like reddit or email. | AndyJado wrote: | Here is an app takes one line as first class citizen. | | it records the time you spend on each line. | | it feels like writing on paper, but more efficient if you dealing | with lines. | | https://github.com/AndyJado/Boya | elchin wrote: | LaTeX does the same as Markdown and HTML - I used to do this when | I was in academia. | wheybags wrote: | 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. | capableweb wrote: | 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... | Beltalowda wrote: | The two spaces-is-linebreak thing is in the commonmark | specification, and has been a Markdown feature from the first | Gruber Perl script, so it should be pretty compatible. | | The problem with it is that it's so "invisible" and that some | editors/people have things setup to strip trailing whitespace | by default. | | I wish there was a simpler way, like "@ at the end of a line | indicates a hard line break", but at well. | xigoi wrote: | Significant trailing whitespace is awful. Many editors have | it invisible and/or automatically remove it. | Jaruzel wrote: | Markdown allows you to inline HTML, so just use the <BR> tag | for a newline. | | Edit: Oh come now... Editing your post to also say what I | replied, then voting me down is poor sportsmanship old chap. | wheybags wrote: | I wrote that bit about br tags before seeing any replies, | sorry :p My sportsmanship is immaculate! | colejohnson66 wrote: | You can't downvote direct replies; Only upvote. Meaning any | downvotes you've received were from others. | Jaruzel wrote: | good point! (I knew that, honest) | lo5 wrote: | Related: Cormac McCarthy's tips on how to write a great science | paper[1] | | > Limit each paragraph to a single message. A single sentence can | be a paragraph. [...] > Keep sentences short, simply constructed | and direct. [...] | | [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02918-5 | aasasd wrote: | Such, errr, 'giants' as BBC evidently already adhere to this | advice, and others follow in their step. | | Though I suspect that the motivation is different. | Angostura wrote: | No. Their paragraphs rarely extend beyond two sentences in news | reports https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61859881 but it | does happen. | honksillet wrote: | I was going to say this. New reporting has denigrated to two | sentence paragraphs. It is ridiculous. | aasasd wrote: | > _denigrated_ | | I don't think that's the word you're looking for =) | | (Since we're on the topic of words in this thread.) | btrettel wrote: | Some previous discussion of this writing/coding style (though not | of this particular page, which didn't go online until today): | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31695393 | | https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/ | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4642395 | | http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/writings/2015-05-13better-writing-... | globular-toast wrote: | This is not a bad idea. Any decent toolchain will support | rendering as paragraphs, including LaTeX. Another advantage not | stated is version control and diffs work much better. You do have | to put up with long lines, but most editors support wrapping long | lines for display purposes. | | I wish I had done this while writing my PhD thesis. | mjcohen wrote: | The mathematician Lillian R. Lieber wrote a number of expository | books in which the text had one phrase per line. I found this | extremely easy to read, and I write my LaTex this way, which | makes it very easy to edit. | | Here is what the previous paragraph would look like in her style: | | The mathematician Lillian R. Lieber | | wrote a number of expository books | | in which the text had one phrase per line. | | I found this extremely easy to read, | | and I write my LaTex this way, | | which makes it very easy to edit. | | I highly recommend the wikipedia article about her and its | references: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Rosanoff_Lieber#Unusua... | dws wrote: | Elsewhere, https://sive.rs/book/ShortSentences, Sivers recommends | "Several Short Sentences About Writing", which is a perspective | on writing that I'd not seen before. A useful read if you want to | practice his present advice. | erellsworth wrote: | Tangentially related: | | "Omit needless words." | | -William Strunk, The Elements of Style | | Highly recommended book for anyone who wants to be a more | effective writer. | eesmith wrote: | Have you read any of the criticism of the book? Its Wikipedia | entry quotes Pullum: | | > The book's toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal | eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in | English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors | appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own | rules ... It's sad. Several generations of college students | learned their grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk | and White, and the result is a nation of educated people who | know they feel vaguely anxious and insecure whenever they write | however or than me or was or which, but can't tell you why. | | (See also "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice" at, eg, | https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-file-manager/fil... | . Language Log recommends | https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Strunk+site%3Ahttp%3A%... | as a way to find further criticism from them.) | | For "Omit needless words", a problem is identifying what | "needless" means. Quoting http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/langua | gelog/archives/004552.h...: | | > Whenever you see an appeal to ONW, you should wonder what | people are doing with those "needless" words. Most of the time, | those extra words are serving some function that conflicts with | brevity; they're doing some work. | | There are also examples how that phrase (likely) caused people | to believe that if a word _can_ be omitted then in _must_ be | ommitted, like | http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004176.h... | and | http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000994.h... | . | | Or how in White's own writings he "sometimes throws in a few | extra words just for the sheer resonant fun of it" - | http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001904.h... | . | | FWIW, I think "don't be too wordy" is more accurate and less | likely to be misunderstood than "omit needless words", and one | character shorter. | | (Personally, I still recall my utter confusion in 11th grade | English trying to figure what "passive" meant when told to | avoid it. Turns out three of the four examples of passive in | "The Elements of Style" ... aren't passive! And yes, I got | marked off for using what may- or may-not have been the | passive.) | supersrdjan wrote: | Authors of the excellent "Clear and Simple as the Truth: | Writing Classic Prose," Francis-Noel Thomas and Mark Turner, | have this to say about Elements of Style: | | Strunk and White's disarming treatment of what everybody really | needs to know about writing has been treasured by generations | of people who are occasionally forced to write something and | view the prospect with a sinking feeling of dread. As a guide | to writing, The Elements of Style, being little more than an | apparently arbitrary mixture of grammatical digest, handy list | of common mistakes, and expert hand-holding, is drastically | incomplete, but it is a masterpiece of psychological insight. | Its attractions derive, we suspect, first, from its implicit, | cheery, and optimistic promise that if you just read its few | pages and work those few surface tricks it teaches you ("In | summaries, keep to one tense," "less should not be used for | fewer"), you will not embarrass yourself; second, from its | exhortatory cheerleading that seems so assured and upbeat; and | third, from its tone of common sense that masks, at key points, | an essential vacuousness: "Choose a suitable design and hold to | it." | | Edit: oh and by the way, the two authors recommend this as a | better alternative (I haven't read it): Style: Toward Clarity | and Grace, by Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb | mattbee wrote: | As a writing manual, I am also a big fan of "First You Write a | Sentence" by Joe Moran. | personlurking wrote: | 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 | hanifc wrote: | 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. | preseinger wrote: | 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 | kuhzaam wrote: | 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. | Semiapies wrote: | 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. | preseinger wrote: | I understand the difference between one line per sentence | at the source level, and at the presentation layer. As far | as I can tell, articles on sivers.org demonstrate both. | Enginerrrd wrote: | 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. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | I'd argue that the job of clumping adjacent sentences | together into paragraphs is a job for whatever builds/renders | the writing, not for the writer. | preseinger wrote: | (laughs) what?? | | Paragraphs -- like punctuation, grammar, syncopation, etc. | etc. -- express semantic intent. They're not, like, type | faces. They're one of the tools that *authors* use to | communicate meaning. | CoryAlexMartin wrote: | I also find his writing very unnatural and hard to read. It | makes me seriously doubt his method, which he claims he's been | using for twenty years. | | The first thing that stood out to me was the robotic nature of | his writing. It seems like he's going so far out of his way to | remove "unnecessary" words from sentences, and remove | "unnecessary" sentences from his paragraphs, and to stringently | vary his sentence lengths, that he winds up writing unnatural | language. If you write in a way people aren't accustomed to, | your readers are going to have a harder time understanding you. | | "Sometimes short. Sometimes long." "Cut three lines. Paste them | up above." | | This isn't how English is used. | sequoia wrote: | I'm surprised no one has mentioned ventilated prose, which is | like this but even moreso: | https://vanemden.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/ventilated-prose/ | nojs wrote: | > Not publishing one sentence per line, no. Write like this for | your eyes only. | | Many news outlets now use this as standard for publishing. | | Random example: every article at https://www.abc.net.au/ | | I challenge you to find a (non-quote) paragraph with more than | one sentence! | II2II wrote: | However, the intent is different. The author is suggesting a | general purpose method to facilitate a more engaging writing | style that can be used even if the product contains paragraphs | of multiple sentences. News outlets use it to facilitate the | conveying of information to the reader. | | (Incidentally, it is not too hard to find multi-sentence | paragraphs in news stories, though it is rare to find anything | exceeding three sentences.) | pkdpic wrote: | Ok. | | I love it. | | This could change everything. | | Future historians may thank us. | | Seriously. | mad44 wrote: | I had copied this Emacs macro just for doing that. | | ;; one sentence per line (defun wrap-at-sentences () "Fills the | current paragraph, but starts each sentence on a new line." | (interactive) (save-excursion ;; Select the entire paragraph. | (mark-paragraph) ;; Move to the start of the paragraph. (goto- | char (region-beginning)) ;; Record the location of the end of the | paragraph. (setq end-of-paragraph (region-end)) ;; Wrap lines | with 'hard' newlines (i.e., real line breaks). (let ((use-hard- | newlines 't)) ;; Loop over each sentence in the paragraph. (while | (< (point) end-of-paragraph) ;; Determine the region spanned by | the sentence. (setq start-of-sentence (point)) (forward-sentence) | ;; Wrap the sentence with hard newlines. (fill-region start-of- | sentence (point)) ;; Delete the whitespace following the period, | if any. (while (char-equal (char-syntax (preceding-char)) ?\s) | (delete-char -1)) ;; Insert a newline before the next sentence. | (insert "\n"))))) | | (global-set-key (kbd "M-j") 'wrap-at-sentences) | mad44 wrote: | Fine, here you go, with the line breaks | | ;; one sentence per line | | (defun wrap-at-sentences () "Fills the current | paragraph, but starts each sentence on a new line." | (interactive) (save-excursion ;; Select | the entire paragraph. (mark-paragraph) | ;; Move to the start of the paragraph. (goto-char | (region-beginning)) ;; Record the location of the | end of the paragraph. (setq end-of-paragraph | (region-end)) ;; Wrap lines with 'hard' newlines | (i.e., real line breaks). (let ((use-hard-newlines | 't)) ;; Loop over each sentence in the | paragraph. (while (< (point) end-of-paragraph) | ;; Determine the region spanned by the sentence. | (setq start-of-sentence (point)) (forward- | sentence) ;; Wrap the sentence with hard | newlines. (fill-region start-of-sentence | (point)) ;; Delete the whitespace following | the period, if any. (while (char-equal (char- | syntax (preceding-char)) ?\s) (delete-char | -1)) ;; Insert a newline before the next | sentence. (insert "\n"))))) | | (global-set-key (kbd "M-j") 'wrap-at-sentences) | capableweb wrote: | Ironically, this snippet seems to be a bit _too_ much wrapped! | | You need to have a empty line between each line on HN for it to | format correctly. If you also ident it by four space, it gets | marked as code in the markup. | yvdriess wrote: | I just love the irony that one needs to manually insert | newlines to copy over code to automate inserting newlines. | jillesvangurp wrote: | Good advice. There are a few nice tools out there to support | technical writing. I think one of them was featured on HN a few | days ago: vale. | | This is a tool that allows for applying simple regular expression | based rules to enforce style rules. The idea is that you can tune | this to your needs and cover all sorts of stylistic rules. For | example, gender neutrality might be a desirable thing in the | documentation for some tech companies and you can get it to flag | things that are clearly not gender neutral. | | Another thing worth mentioning is Jetbrains Grazie Professional | (warning it's different from the normal grazie plugin, which is | confusing), which actually integrates vale and can be used as a | plugin for editing both code comments and markdown files in | Intellij and other Jetbrains IDEs. | | In general, treating text like you would treat programming code | as a thing that has rules that can be figured out and enforced is | a good mindset. I learned to write coherent text while doing my | Ph. D. a long time ago. At some point I figured out that anything | I'm doing consistently wrong, I can just learn to do consistently | right. I just need to be open for criticism and figure out why | something is wrong/not ideal. You kind of learn to look for | things that you've done wrong before in your own text and then | you fix it. A lot of these rules aren't rocket science. You just | need to know about them. There's a whole grey area between | grammatically correct and stylistically pleasing/acceptable. | Having tools point out things that are likely problematic helps. | keewee7 wrote: | 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. | iLoveOncall wrote: | Did you read the article? The author says to write with one | sentence per line, not to _publish_ with one sentence per line. | Hendrikto wrote: | This reads like it was written by a third-grader. Accessible? | Maybe. Enjoyable? Not in my book. | | As a German speaker, I feel like English prose is already | extremely biased towards short sentences. This makes some sense, | as German has much more grammar to make these sentences readable | and unambiguous. | | At some point, I feel like making sentences even shorter does not | aid the readability, but rather stands in its way. | xwdv wrote: | Sentences are just a tool for exchanging an idea. The actual | sentence doesn't matter, only the idea. | thejohnconway wrote: | The article isn't advocating making sentences shorter. It is | using short sentences, but that is not what is being said. | avgcorrection wrote: | If you want five-line sentences with plenty of dashes and | semicolons then the American Humanities still has got you | covered. | mbg117 wrote: | This article had more to do with the visual separation of | sentences, so they're easier to inspect at a glance, and not so | much how small they are. | | Not necessarily the containment of each sentence to a single | line, but a new line between each sentence to maintain | separation. | planetsprite wrote: | tech bloggers discover greentexting | bregma wrote: | This was the rule in the 1980s when using nroff and it's a habit | I developed when using any markup. It's good to know that it's | been rediscovered again as newcomers mature in their tool use. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-20 23:00 UTC)