Death of the Paragraph

There used to be this writing concept.

I guess it’s outdated now.

You know… OLD.

From the nineteen hundreds, old.

I used it all the time, back when I was in school and had to write papers. I used it in essays and stories in my creative writing classes.

There was a format for writing different things.

Stories.

Essays.

Poems.

They didn’t all look the same.

They didn’t all look like

POEMS.

Now all that has changed.

Now, when people have to make a point, when they have something to say, they need it to look a certain way. Dramatic.

Or something.

Also there’s this whole thing where we have totally lost our ability to read full sentences, full texts, without our eyes needing a break, even though we are ADULTS, we have decided to break everything we write into these little baby bites. I read an article last year that college professors

COLLEGE PROFESSORS

have stopped teaching full texts to their students because their students can’t read the full texts, it’s just too much, they can’t get through them without having a breakdown. THEY CAN’T GET THOUGH A WHOLE BOOK is what the article was saying, and instead of re-teaching these ADULTS how to read a book in its entirety, they just teach excerpts now, they cater to the “it’s too hard” whining of COLLEGE STUDENTS WHO DON’T WANT TO READ A WHOLE BOOK. WHAT THE HECK IS HAPPENING HERE?!

Oh shoot, I forgot my cool writing style.

I apologize.

In this new style, I also should repeat myself a lot.

It gets more clicks, I suppose.

Drags people along.

And along.

And along.

These little word nibbles are so easy to read, we just swallow them right down.

This is what social media is about, isn’t it? The quick. The bite-sized. The big thought in a brief moment.

Nobody has time to spend on a single thought anymore. We don’t want to savor what we take in.

We see, we move on. See, move on.

And there is no end.

It’s a bread trail leading nowhere, giving meager sustenance.

We keep scrolling.

We keep clicking.

But where are the complete thoughts?

Where are the complete texts?

Why have we abandoned longer collections of words with proper indentation at the beginning, and a full topic made of many sentences within that readable rectangle, which ends with a soft segue into the next properly indented collection of related words and sentences? What has happened to the standard, yet artful method of writing called

The Paragraph?

I love you, Paragraph, I miss you.

I hope you return soon. In the meantime, I’ll keep your memory alive, because I think this overused, choppy way of writing is silly.