I’m Scrolling Past You if You Can’t Write in Paragraphs

It is so, so annoying when people write like this.

Every single sentence on its own new line.

When you write like this, feeding me each bit of an idea bit by tiny bit

I end up scrolling endlessly, waiting and waiting for your thoughts

to actually hang together.

An essay is not poetry.

An essay is not a screenplay.

See, before the stupid cell phone was invented, English was written in paragraphs, like this. Like ideas grouped together in a related block of printing, one topic sentence and its supporting ideas all together.

We obviously don’t want one huge block of printing — paragraphs are allowed to be short — (NO, this isn’t AI), but to eliminate the paragraph from the English language removes coherence from your writing.

Instead of writing like an educated person, you start writing like Jar Jar Binks. One reason audiences hated the Star Wars alien from the prequels is his made-up accent, with all those extra syllables, meant he took twice as long to say anything and get an entire idea out of his mouth than anyone else onscreen.

When you write

line by line by line

that is exactly what you are doing.

And it is annoying in the extreme.

Please write English the way it was meant to be written and read. There’s nothing wrong with THE PARAGRAPH.

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