Toronto Star Article, Terrible Read

[mtb]

olympics.thestar.com/2010/article/747356--hurdler-ditches-breast-implants-to-go-flat-out

There is the link. After reading the article I am completely outraged. I am still unsure how to properly convey my feelings on the subject. It is surprising to me that no one has brought this up before

Did anyone check out the writing style of this guy? He has paragraphs that only one sentence long. I believe I saw one paragraph with an incredible three sentences, that is not right. I know that I do not have the best form for writing either, however it is not only this writer who is skimping on his paragraphs. Most the articles I read in the Star contain very short paragraphs.

I hope others will follow me and write in to the Toronto Star about their writer's writing style. I do not feel comfortable with kids growing with free access to such poor writing style.

Just my 3.1415 cents

[journeyman]

The article is not poorly written. That's journalistic style. Keep the paragraphs very short, strictly one idea, per. Most important information up front, details later. The reason for that is that editors did not want to have to go back to the writer to figure out what could stay and what could go if they had to chop for space. They knew by convention they could just lop off the back end. That was related of course to the space limitations of print. I wonder if in the age of internet, it is time to forget that convention, since there are no space limitations on the net?

[ahutch]

I assume the OP's kidding, but if not: journeyman is correct that it's written in newspaper style. Take a look at any newspaper, anywhere in the world, anytime in the last half-century or so -- it's very unusual to find a paragraph with more than three sentences, especially in a news story (as opposed to a back-page essay or something).

The reason is that, unlike books, magazines, and high-school essays, newspapers are printed in narrow columns. A paragraph with seven or eight sentences would look normal if you print it out from your computer (or read it on the web), but it would take up a whole column in a newspaper, making it hard to read.

(The rationale for short paragraphs is separate from the "inverted pyramid" style -- present info in order of importance rather than chronological order -- that journeyman refers to. That's partly due to pre-computer typesetting limitations, which haven't been a factor for at least two decades. But it also relates to how people read newspapers -- people expect to be able to flip through a newspaper and get the most important details about each story from the first few paragraphs, while only reading to the end of the stories they're most interested in.)

As for complaining to the Star, that's a wire story, so the writer doesn't work for Star -- he or she is in Australia.

[wetcoast]

mtb makes one point, which is the fact that today's way of writing, for those who wish to read articles with substance, details and written in a more traditional style, the new(er) way of writing is really just eye-brain candy for those of us who are too fueled and too busy to pay attention for long enough to appreciate the essay style. However, it is a well written article. With the advent of the internet articles now must follow even more eye-brain candy rules to keep the reader from glancing and clicking away to some other possibly more digestible story. I often ignore the rules myself, because I think there really are people who can read for 5 whole minutes and I think there are people like mtb who wish for something more. Additionally, an article with substance may have a better shelf life - the breast implant, de-plant article will be forgotten tomorrow.

[wetcoast]

And I like fragmented sentences and run on sentences, as you can see (doh!).

[ahutch]

With all due respect, the short paragraphs in newspapers (which is what the OP was talking about) have nothing to do with "today's way of writing." Here's a random example of a newspaper article from 1981 (the earliest year the New York Times archive is freely available):

www.nytimes.com/1981/01/11/nyregion/long-island-journal-217526.html?scp=7&sq=ronald+reagan+inaugural&st=nyt

The article is over 1,000 words long, full of "substance and details." The number of sentences per paragraph goes: 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2... That's just a function of writing for a publication printed in narrow columns. People only notice now because they're reading these newspaper articles on the web, without the narrow columns.

Of course it's true that style and expectations are changing -- for the worse, I agree! Attention spans are shorter and vocabularies are smaller. But it's not about paragraph length.

[wetcoast]

I worked with a Journalism teacher (she was a technical writer at the time) she taught at SFU on the weekends. Her and I spent quite some time (me getting a free education) going over all sorts of interesting things like retinal scan studies (where people look on a site or photo) the difference in where the different genders look on a page, how people read a page etc.

It was very clear from our little web writing 101 that sentences need to be shorter than in print, paragraphs shorter than in print and the point of the article must be in the first paragraph. The details can come later, if the reader wishes to continue. She called it, writing in reverse of typical print.

She showed me reading patterns and all sorts of other facts. She did say that writing in print had started to turn this way some time ago - which you show in your post of the NYTimes article as a great example. There are a couple of things that a web version of that article would today probably be different, sub-heads I think they are called, a line between paragraphs indicating what you will be reading next - perhaps 2 or 3 throughout this article. Also even shorter paragraphs.

If you read CNN stuff, there are whole articles of 3 to 5 paragraphs, some have 20 paragraphs of 1 and 2 short sentences. This is more the nature of reporting however, even their story on Avatar getting two Golden Globes is all very short paragraphs. Whereas you can go to Harper's or The New Yorker and see all sorts of essay style writing - including their reporting of events in Haiti.

I think for all the rules, there are fist-fulls of exceptions to cater to the type of reader or the intention of the reader towards the articles they are seeking