One of the pet peeves that I have when curating posts on the platform is those long blocks of text that people use for paragraphs. They distract from a pleasant reading experience. Reading a post should not be a struggle, it should be an experience of being drawn through the post using a combination of well crafted wording and a pleasant reader experience.
Those of us raised reading on the printed page often saw long paragraphs making them seem to the norm. They often are on the written page. Viewing on an electronic screen is a different experience. Our eyes react different to electrons than to paper.
The Quick Evolution of the Paragraph
Like most elements of writing, paragraphs have evolved through the ages. In the oldest Greek texts, the only form of punctuation mentioned by Aristotle was a horizontal line called the paragraphos was placed under the beginning of a line in which a new topic was introduced.
By the 17th century the line space between paragraphs was introduced along with the concepts of indenting them and capatalizing the start of a sentence.
The line space wasn’t strongly adopted until well into the 20th century when printing costs dropped drastically with wood based papers rather than vellum.
Screen reading has dropped the indent on paragraphs. The “white” space created by the paragraph break gives the eye a very brief rest. Reading on a screen can tire the eyes quickly
What Should A Paragraph Look Like?
Paragraphs introduce a new topic. In printed text, the paragraph often will introduce the topic and then give the discussion to go with it. On the screen, paragraphs need to break the topic into related discussions similar to the format you see when reading a newspaper.
Notice the paragraphs in this post are varied but not long? That is what you’re shooting toward when writing a post. You also need to break the text up with headings or graphics. Large paragraphs broken with graphics doesn’t do it. Your paragraphs need to be as compact as possible.
Let’s Look At An Example to Illustrate
Here is a paragraph I plucked out of a posts of overlong paragraphs. I wont center-out the author by naming him/her.
The Original:
Don't just sit there and be a bank or a "baller" in some cases. That won't mean a damn thing when you cannot access any of it. DO SOMETHING positive with that! Invest in the network that pays your bills. This would be akin to helping to build highways in a local or national level. These help everyone, but ESPECIALLY those that use them more often. Investments like these by large corporations, guilds, associations, committees and organizations in the "real world" insure that their products and ideas can spread abroad thus equaling more profits for them in the long run simply because they invested in the means in which people will access these products and ideas, and how they are distributed. This is no different with steem. The technology that runs this network (seed nodes) provide the means for product sellers (authors and curators) to distribute their ideas and products abroad. They are our highways. Our pipelines and utilities. It is critically important that these are not only always working and available (so that our products can be consumed without issue), but it is also critical that control of these said "highways" be neutral and unaffected by the politics that are at hand within the current hierarchy of top 10 witnesses. This is not meant to piss anyone off or undermine anyone's effort. It's not meant to step on anyone's toes or invoke a spirit of competition with anyone else's interests in any way. This is a problem that affects everyone so getting witness votes and support from whales (not just other witnesses or top 20 witnesses) is essential to help the community flourish.
Pretty brutal reading, right? Now Let’s see if that can be broken down into something easier on the eyes:
Don't just sit there and be a bank or a "baller" in some cases. That won't mean a damn thing when you cannot access any of it. DO SOMETHING positive with that! Invest in the network that pays your bills.
This would be akin to helping to build highways in a local or national level. These help everyone, but ESPECIALLY those that use them more often.
Investments like these by large corporations, guilds, associations, committees and organizations in the "real world" insure that their products and ideas can spread abroad thus equaling more profits for them in the long run simply because they invested in the means in which people will access these products and ideas, and how they are distributed. This is no different with steem.
The technology that runs this network (seed nodes) provide the means for product sellers (authors and curators) to distribute their ideas and products abroad. They are our highways. Our pipelines and utilities.
It is critically important that these are not only always working and available (so that our products can be consumed without issue), but it is also critical that control of these said "highways" be neutral and unaffected by the politics that are at hand within the current hierarchy of top 10 witnesses.
This is not meant to piss anyone off or undermine anyone's effort. It's not meant to step on anyone's toes or invoke a spirit of competition with anyone else's interests in any way.
This is a problem that affects everyone so getting witness votes and support from whales (not just other witnesses or top 20 witnesses) is essential to help the community flourish.
Do you see the difference in the reading experience? The exact same words, but easier to make your way through. Well, there was a run on sentence in there but that wasn’t for me to fix as part of this post. Maybe another time, I’ll take a look at sentence structure.
Hope this helps.
Until Next Time — Just Steem on
