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Comment by kkoncevicius | Hacker News Reader

What's the deal with using one-sentence paragraphs? Recently I am seeing this trend more and more, it always confuses me a bit.

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It's a desperate attempt at profundity. Particularly when a very short sentence follows in the next paragraph to declare some great insight.

Like this.

The real great thinkers demonstrated profundity by separating each word with a clap emoticon though.

That's not my reading of the article. There are at least two other reasons you write short paragraphs. The first is the most likely explanation for this post:

Because you don't want to spend time writing a good paragraph that mixes multiple ideas together.

As a substitute for tldr, either before or after a long block of text. I frequently use this approach. I don't want to spend a lot of time writing an internet comment, time being valuable and all, but I do want the reader to know the point I'm trying to get across even if the writing isn't 100% professional. I picked it up on Reddit long ago, as a reaction to someone always giving a lengthy comment the exact opposite interpretation to what was intended.

My understanding is that one paragraph should represent one idea. The OP article certainly doesn't follow this. It seems like it made a new paragraph out of what should have been a sentence, and it made a new section out of what should have been a paragraph.

Perhaps you weren't around at the peak of blogging era when all the gurus usually running self-help blogs were preaching that writing style to aspiring bloggers. It stuck around and still is dominant in blogging - and for good reasons for certain audience.

Information examples from more popular blogs:

https://neilpatel.com/blog/write-copy-like-apple/ https://copyblogger.com/short-guide-to-good-copy/

Could it be due to a focus on progress over perfection, and that hitting the enter key feels like progress?

I do it when writing online because the average online audience's reading habits are to skim content, not fully read a paragraph. A collection of short paragraphs can get the message across better than longer explanations of the same points.

I see, but wouldn't this end up being optimised for people who skim the text at the cost of making it harder to read for people who are actually interested in your content?

Yes, that is a fair point that once people are interested, they will read more deeply... I sometimes try to handle both by bolding the key words and phrases to help skimmers while leaving in additional content for readers. I'll give it some thought the next time I write up some blog posts, but for much of the writing online, you are right - it is optimized for skimmers.

Personally, It helps me write succinctly. I'll start with long paragraphs then remove content to get to 1-2 sentences.

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