Para Graph
Lately I’ve noticed a disturbing trend for online articles, be it mainstream news, weblogs, instructional articles, or whatever other bilge is available: current articles contain a preponderance of one sentence paragraphs. Not only one-sentence paragraphs, but single sentences. Yes, Thomas Mann created masterpieces of one-sentence paragraphs, but those were so fluid and beautifully complicated they don’t even compare.
Now, I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that writing is not my forte (these small vignettes may be the only thing I write that work to some small degree), and I’m by no means in the running for grammar king, but I can’t begin to understand how such stilted narratives don’t grate on the authors’ collectives noggins. Throw in a comma, somwhere! (Then again, I abuse puncuation.) But let the prose rumble forward like a wave; imbue some variation and dynamics!
Do people not re-read their tripe at least once, say, to feel the flow of the text or to see if their idea is reasonably expressed? Or is it indicative of this accelerated producer-consumer culture? “Don’t worry about that literary vomit, the crowds will have moved on tomorrow.” Since sentences in a paragraph should be related to the development of an idea, and paragraph breaks should be used to separate different developments, digressions, expressions, evolutions, concepts, or perhaps to just provide visual cues for ease of reading extended narratives, are these authors indicating that each utterance is so damn accurate and succinct that it encapsulates an entire concept, introduction, development, and conclusion, in one gem of an atom? Or is it that there is so little content that we’re performing the collegiate equivalent of expanding our word processor’s margins? Or perhaps there was no cohesion to the piece in the first place?
Take this excerpt from NBC newswire, the complete text of which has a grand total of 9 sentences and no quotation to force paragraph breaks:
COLUMBIA, S.C. – The South Carolina Senate has given preliminary approval to a bill that authorizes the death penalty for twice-convicted child rapists.
The proposal approved Tuesday still needs a final reading before going on to the House.
It would authorize prosecutors to seek capital punishment for any sex offender convicted twice of raping children younger than 11.
The plan is part of a larger bill that would set minimum sentences for sex offenders and require lifetime electronic monitoring for some of them.
Then again, perhaps this has been occuring longer than I’ve been aware, and it’s just my focus on fluidity in my martial arts that brings it to the forefront. If that’s the case, bueno, as recognition of the problem is the first step to remediation. ‘Cause reading that makes my brain hurtz.