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Re: End-of-sentence spacing
From: |
Karthik Suresh |
Subject: |
Re: End-of-sentence spacing |
Date: |
Sat, 19 Dec 2020 20:18:19 +0000 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/68.10.0 |
In my opinion it is good style to start every sentence on a new
source line.
A piece of advice I have been happily ignoring since sometime back
in the 90s. Certain kinds of texts (scientific, technical) and the
ways they are to be used (e.g. one off, or formatted for multiple media
types and platforms) undeniably benefit from it. But I simply
cannot compose a work of fiction, or an article, or a rewiew one
screen line at a time. It is not how one reads (at least not those
of us who grew up reading ink on dead trees), and significantly
interferes with one's ability to assess the meaning and flow of the
text.
I have had the opposite experience with this method for two reasons.
The first reason is that being able to write using this approach and
then read a formatted text creates a bit of distance between the two
views - it's almost like reading what I've written for the first time
and that helps with editing.
The second thing is that if you use in the "right" way, it feels like
you're writing poetry, and the rhythm of the words carry you along. This
is what Brandon Rhodes calls "semantic linebreaks" and a few other
people talk about a similar approach when writing comedy. I think it's
also the advice Brian Kernighan gives about breaking at natural phrase
points in the text as we tend to edit a phrase at a time.
This is the the first paragraph of _Bleak House_ typed one screen
line at a time, no wrap:
London.
Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn
Hall.
Implacable November weather.
As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face
of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet
long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.
For example, if I rewrote this paragraph in the way it reads to me and I
tend to write now:
London.
Michaelmas term lately over,
and the Lord Chancellor
sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall.
Implacable November weather.
As much mud in the streets
as if the waters had but newly retired
from the face of the earth,
and it would not be wonderful
to meet a Megalosaurus,
forty feet long or so,
waddling like an elephantine lizard
up Holborn Hill.
I feel like it helps with the editing process. Perhaps the Lord
Chancellor should be standing, looking up or down the hill -
watching for the lizard. I'm not sure where the geography is, between
where the Chancellor is and Holborn Hill might be but perhaps this kind
of wrapping might have helped make it clear.
Obviously each to their own, but I don't think the point of the advice
is about automatic wrapping at a certain level. I take it to be more
about cadence and flow and rhythm and personally find it very useful in
my writing.
Karthik
--
Blog <https://karthik-suresh.com>
- End-of-sentence spacing, Dorai Sitaram, 2020/12/19
- Re: End-of-sentence spacing, Dave Kemper, 2020/12/19
- Re: End-of-sentence spacing, Peter Schaffter, 2020/12/20
- Re: End-of-sentence spacing, Dave Kemper, 2020/12/21
- Re: End-of-sentence spacing, G. Branden Robinson, 2020/12/22
- Re: End-of-sentence spacing, Dave Kemper, 2020/12/22
- Re: End-of-sentence spacing, Peter Schaffter, 2020/12/22
- Re: End-of-sentence spacing, Dave Kemper, 2020/12/28