• thingsiplay@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    I know, my question was not directly why its in this news this way. Its a more general question by me. I don’t get it. Lot of personal blogs do this too, BTW. In my opinion this is “wrong”. A paragraph should consists multiple sentences, that contain a single thought process or something else to group. Its like in programming code to do every single statement a blank line in between. Instead an idea should be grouped together into a block. Just an analogy with code. /My Opinion

    My believe is, they want intentionally make the post look bigger. Instead 3 or 4 paragraphs (which would be the entire article in this case) they spread it out like this. So you have to scroll and see more ads and links and they have more possibilities to put more ads and links in between every paragraph. /My Conspiracy

    Edit: Maybe there is something else. Lot of people read news articles on smartphones. And text would wrap around very quickly and look longer than they are. So maybe using more paragraphs gives more room between each sentence. As I am not reading much on smartphones, can’t judge this. But I still don’t like this. /My Edit

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      2 days ago

      I think it’s partly because many people are only semi literate, and breaking the text up helps people read it. A larger block of text is "intimidating’

      • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        2 or 3 sentences in row might look intimating for some (I still don’t buy this reasoning, did they ever visit a school?), but I think it actually hinders readability and not improves. Because every sentence is its own paragraph, the brain won’t find the connected sentences that build up a uniq thought process. Breaking up text with logic makes more sense for readability and is even better for quickly scanning through text.

        I don’t believe breaking up text for each sentence makes it more readable. Even for those who say it makes, because I think they are “wrong”. Sorry if I came over a opposite-argumentative, but this is a thing that bothers me a lot when reading and I just explain why I think its wrong.

        • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 days ago

          Half of US adults can’t read at a 6th grade level. I think speed and accuracy of reading is also pretty low (I read like 80 wpm and 80% accuracy somewhere, but i couldn’t immediately find a good source for that).

          If you’re on a text forum like this you’re probably well above the average person, and your experiences are not universal.

          That said, I don’t have any data on hand about readability so you could be right. I’m sure people have studied it.