Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Karthik Suresh]

> > 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

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Blog <https://karthik-suresh.com>