This might be a bit mean

[GhostInTheMachine]

Hmm.. I guess so, I see your point.. But I suppose my biggest problem with this is that you are bringing up paragraphs / grammar to the forefront While there could Literally be a Life in jeopardy on the other side.

And yeah, of course you aren't holding a gun to anybody's head, But Maybe the person on the other side of the screen Is holding one to Their Own head. We never really know on this site, who knows. ♥

Yeah, you're entirely right. That's a really good analogy too.

 

[monetpompo]

i love paragraphs because i'm physically in capable of reading things without line breaks. i will actually die if things don't have line breaks because my eyes will just glaze over the wall off text completely. i do run on sentences a lot in my own posts but i try to remember varying sentence lengths and hitting enter to space out a post. even if i don't think my writing's good i still want people to be able to read or skim it

 

[SchizoGymnast]

I'm not asking for a perfect score on a Writing SAT, I'm asking people hit the enter key every few sentences. It's really not that deep.

Exactly. Someone in a vegetative state can do that.

 

[justaperfectday]

Yeah, you're entirely right. That's a really good analogy too.

Long sentences are not the same as run-on sentences. It would behoove you to understand the differance before trying to make such claims. The entire reason paragraphs even exist is because it's not just a "me" problem with reading text blocks. Otherwise such blocks of text would be perfectly acceptable in pretty much any scenario and the vast majority of people would have no issue reading them. We don't live in that world, and if people want to be heard, they need to do the bare minimum to be comprehensible. If you feel shamed because somebody points out they can't understand you, that's more of a personal issue than anything. I don't see how people can't hit the enter key every few sentences.

"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." -Gary

Long sentences are not the same as run-on sentences. It would behoove you to understand the differance before trying to make such claims. The entire reason paragraphs even exist is because it's not just a "me" problem with reading text blocks. Otherwise such blocks of text would be perfectly acceptable in pretty much any scenario and the vast majority of people would have no issue reading them. We don't live in that world, and if people want to be heard, they need to do the bare minimum to be comprehensible. If you feel shamed because somebody points out they can't understand you, that's more of a personal issue than anything. I don't see how people can't hit the enter key every few sentences.

"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." -Gary Provost

No way you could have posted this without knowing you'd get blowback. I, however, agree with you for all intents and purposes (sorry, couldn't help myself). And the right to express yourself applies to you as well. You weren't attacking a specific user, just offering an opinion about how people might make connections. Then members jumped on you. Seems free self expression has limits, even when it doesn't target anyone specifically.

 

[Carrot]

I'm sorry, but this is uncalled for. Everyone is here to express themselves, we should not be policing how people talk on this platform.

It's not abour policing, this is advice. People can write however they want, but if they expect a reply, they can help others by making it easier to read and reply to.

 

[SchizoGymnast]

It's not abour policing, this is advice. People can write however they want, but if they expect a reply, they can help others by making it easier to read and reply to.

Exactly. It's no different than asking someone not to use neon yellow text on a white background. We care. We want to read. We want to help, but we are literally visually prevented from doing so. Here is a super simple solution so we can help. Done.

 

[GhostInTheMachine]

No way you could have posted this without knowing you'd get blowback. I, however, agree with you for all intents and purposes (sorry, couldn't help myself). And the right to express yourself applies to you as well. You weren't attacking a specific user, just offering an opinion about how people might make connections. Then members jumped on you. Seems free self expression has limits, even when it doesn't target anyone specifically.

It was in the back of my mind for sure, but perhaps I'm a glutton for controversy. I do think that some of the counterpoints made thus far have been good in their own right, and I appreciate those who can disagree with me without turning it personal.

 

[quietwoods]

It's not abour policing, this is advice. People can write however they want, but if they expect a reply, they can help others by making it easier to read and reply to.

Literally this and just this. That's all that was trying to be expressed.

This thread has gotten so stupidly derailed by people berating OP to be more empathetic and put the time into reading and understanding other people's posts when they clearly themselves have not put in the time or effort to fully read and understand OP's original post.

Sigh.

 

[Dejected 55]

I'm going to backtrack slightly... Firstly, my apologies for the wrong pronoun use in an earlier post. Can't always tell from writing styles or content or even avatars. I'm bound to get some wrong now and then, but I do apologize for that.

Moving on... I've seen the OP make helpful posts in other threads, so this is not a case of someone just here to be a contrarian and stir the pot. I've seen a few users like that and they tend to not be here long because they don't add anything meaningful to discussion. The OP is not one of those sorts of people on the forum.

Now, this particular topic is a hot button issue for me... and I'll tell you why. I have been (when I was employed) a Technical Writer for most of my adult life. So it was literally my job not only to write professional content but to often edit other people's content as well. So I'm quite attuned to what is and what is not correct grammar and punctuation use... but I strongly curb myself against critiquing non-professional forum posts like we find here. I limit myself to honest miscommunications due to improper grammar or punctuation. As long as I can understand the post, I see no reason to bash the writing style of anyone.

In my professional life there were always critics, though. As in... people would try and correct grammar in early drafts of documents rather than supply me with accurate technical content. The subject matter experts would often dig in their hills on a grammatical typo when I needed to know accurate technical details. It was frustrating. They were literally the only people who knew the technical details and would outright refuse sometimes to give me correct data. I explained that on the first draft I didn't care at all about typos because I knew the information itself was inaccurate. Why worry about polishing the turd when I knew I needed fresher shit? I'd polish that later.

Also, I would put purposely incorrect information like "this is the step that does the thing I don't know what happens" and an "expert" would mark that is "incorrect" as if that wasn't the point of the phrase! And, of course, they would neglect to tell me the right answer as well! I was constantly frustrated by would-be grammar police who would waste my time on that and sometimes never give me accurate technical data. I often was correcting technical data myself based on my own education and understanding of the physics behind what I was writing. I chided lots of Engineers for giving me wrong information and asked why did *I* know more about their job than they did?

Once, I shit you not, we were months down the road on a project and I had mostly written a manual for a product... only to have an Engineer pop up out of the blue and say the product could not possibly do what it was intended to do because physics... and we were all frustrated because marketing had customers lined up for a product they had asked Engineering to design, everyone had done their bits, but the Designer of the schematics made errors that should have been obvious to him that only showed up once the prototypes were built and could not do what they were expected. The project got scrapped because it turns out it would double the cost or something to do what it was supposed to do and nobody wanted it at twice the cost.

So, my point in all this... is to apologize for perhaps digging in too hard on the OP and definitely for getting her pronoun wrong and for ignoring the OP as a valuable contributor elsewhere on the forum. But also, what I saw in this thread specifically was a hot button for me where it seemed to me the OP was focusing on the least important aspect of posts on this forum in favor of being critical of posts structure without appearing to be sensitive to their content or the state of mind of the poster.

Oh, and this is a long post that often is not liked... I used to get in trouble at work for writing "too long posts" but then I would experiment and just give short answers directly to the point of questions I was asked... and then the complainers would always ask more questions that I knew they would ask and could have answered all at once... more frustrating. But I digress.