Writing Gooder: Clarity Through Format
30 Jun
Many a good writer has been ruined by reading James Joyce. All of a sudden, the lack of punctuation and rambling sentence structure seems to become not only artistic, but desirable.
James Joyce is one of my favorite authors, but one of the many things I recognize is that I am not James Joyce. Stuff he could get away with is stuff I could never get away with, and for good reason. Once you begin to mess with the rules of grammar, the reader becomes disoriented and confused. This is bad. However, most grammar benders are not intentional, and that’s the focus of this article.
Obtaining clarity through format is often overlooked. For some reason, we tend to forget that paragraphs, punctuation, and other devices are meant to make the text more comprehensible to readers. Arguably, this movement to aid comprehension began with Julius Caesar. In his time, there was no punctuation, including spaces. Insteadtextranlikethiswiththereaderhavingtoguesswhereonewordendedandthenextbegan. Caesar recognized the problems this entailed, and solved it by placing a dot under the first letter of each word.
Today, we are fortunate to have an incredibly well-developed system of grammar. This system has been developed not only to aid the reader, but also to aid the writer in conveying their thoughts. So what is the biggest mistake?
The Run-On Paragraph. In school, many of us learn the five paragraph essay method: one introduction paragraph, three body, and one concluding. For most, this is their first introduction to real writing, and some never come to understand that the five paragraph method is simply a way to teach you how to develop ideas.
Breaking up paragraphs not only allows you to easily separate ideas, but it also presents a less imposing text to the reader. Simply put, one page of text with no paragraphs will be less appealing to read than a book where the writer uses paragraphs. So do yourself a favor and avoid the run-on paragraph.
Not to mention the emphasis a short paragraph can give.
The only time I use run-on paragraphs is when I’m writing my notes. Which, btw, will rarely see public light. Sometimes you just need to get stuff down stream-of-consciousness format. But, like I said, those notes usually don’t go out into the public.
Pshh, dialogue marks are so old school. So old school that I don’t even know what old school means.
But yeah, I think it can work – like with James Joyce – but it takes a lot of skill, something I clearly lack. Up until recently, I still used the five paragraph method. XD
I’d have to agree– this aspect of writing is easily overlooked. Some of the best advice I ever got on a story was that I should be aware of paragraph length and how it looks on the page. If the paragraphs are all erratic and there’s a huge wall of text, and then a little one-sentence snippet, it looks really awkward. Not to say that they all have to be exactly the same size, but it should feel smooth, no?
‘Tis so true. I’ve had to point this out to so many newbie writers (both here on YWS and other places) who don’t realize how hard it is to read huge blocks of text. Especially on a computer.