[tobyjsullivan]

Reading, I knew someone would comment on it. I actually prefer the style - maybe because my attention span is shot. But I think it’s more because the author made sure each sentence was content heavy. No verbose paragraphs. And paragraphs made of dense sentences are themselves dense and become harder to read.

Reflect on the structure of your own comment. I suspect you were not intentionally trying to be ironic.

Edit: revisiting the article, I’ll allow that the author may have over-done it in some parts. But I think the bias was in the right direction.

[ablob]

A paragraph is a feature designed to help the reader understand the writer's intentions. If it is used all the time, just like here, then it ceases to be helpful in marking breaks in trains of thought; or anything for that matter.

Consider the following excerpt of the post:

  The thick life doesn't scale.

  That's the whole point.

  So: bake bread.

There is absolutely no information there that would warrant three full stops. I also don't know the author nearly well enough to consider pondering its meaning: To my eyes there is only a need to stop and ponder at most once. It is essentially just noise.

There is something to be gained from the text, but it is overblown in size due to what appears to be a lack of time or skill of the author.

PS: If some context is missing in the excerpt: Well to bad that there is no natural marker signifying that a train of thought has concluded (or started).

[datastoat]

Wouldn’t it be handy if the browser could intelligently join this author’s sentences into paragraphs?! (in connection to the thread about Mozilla putting AI in the browser)

[wlesieutre]

Heck just skip the website and ask the AI to make some text for you to read

[eCa]

No, I want to read it (or not) the way the writer intended.

[unyttigfjelltol]

The prose is self-consciously different, makes the reader work a little harder. One can almost feel a literary water ripple or pebble garden, stillness and simplicity.

Consider an analogy: the writer knows that a reader readily digests concepts in C++ and purposely pivots to something obscure like Pony. The reader says "this is inconvenient, I need to change my process to digest your work" and the author says "that's the point."

[mplewis]

ok, but there's nothing there. The point of this piece is empty calories.

[ssl-3]

I thought the point was about baking bread?

I've never baked a loaf of bread.

I've never baked anything more complex than a pre-packaged cornbread mix, or a frozen pizza.

Baking has always been someone else's problem.

But having now skimmed through this bit of weirdly-formatted writing, I might give it a shot.

(Oh, and of that formatting: It reminds me a bit of what suck.com looked like in the mid-late 1990s. I still have the sticker they sent me stuck to a thing ~30 years later, but the suck-branded Gold Circle Coin condom they sent with it got mangled pretty bad in the mail.)

[2b3a51]

I started baking bread because I had a bag of plain flour (i.e. not bread flour, only 9% protein) sitting in the cupboard and approaching its sell-by date. So I made 'ships biscuits', and one thing led to another.

So a bag of what in the UK is called 'strong white flour' (i.e. protein around 12%, I think it is 'all purpose' in US) and a sachet of instant yeast and some salt. Followed the instructions on the bread bag and it worked sort of, a bit solid but edible and it toasted nice.

Then you just iterate. Lots of stuff out on the Web. I use supermarket flour and the dried active yeast and the ingredients are 10x cheaper than even a basic bought loaf. And mixing and baking is fun. Sourdough is OK but you then have a pet to look after...

[ssl-3]

I noticed last night that I have two bags of "all-purpose" flour taking up space.

Perhaps the time has come.

[aoeusnth1]

In what way were the sentences content heavy? It's quite repetitive, and often the meaning of a section of it will be split into individual fragments.

I get it.

One sentence pragraphs feel punchy.

It feels like you're writing copy for an Apple ad.

..but it only works when it's in another medium, in a shorter format. In this form, it's just exhausting.

[markburns]

> Reflect on the structure of your own comment

Could you clarify, are you comparing the parent comment to the article?

[0928374082]

> "my attention span is shot"

Maybe you like being restricted to reading in the ad-copy register, in which case go ahead and make virtue of vice, but otherwise: this lack is well within your power to remedy.