Someone wrote me:
“I really like your posts. Could you please use paragraph structure though? Thanks.”
Since the entry qualification for Bob’s Blog is that you have outgrown your college education, whether you had one or not, I am stuck with a lot EDUCATED people here.
So a lot of you may have noticed that my paragraph structure is pure anarchy.
So let me assure you there is a reason for this. I am open to disagreement.
Here was my reply to, “Could you please use paragraph structure though? Thanks.”
MY REPLY:
No.
Richard Viguerie made a fortune on direct mail before everybody else ( See my 1982 book) copied him.
He did statistical tests, and found that long paragraph structure does not WORK.
Not from the critical point of view, but from the plebian point of view of getting people to READ it.
Correct paragraph structure is technically correct according to those who make the rules.
But back on Planet Earth people find it BORING.
Hemingway was also criticized for his unscientific paragraphs, but he never gave them up and his stuff sold pretty well.
#1 by Antonio Fini on 05/31/2006 - 7:28 pm
Ah! So that’s what I missed by never going to college.
And all this time I thought I was handicapped by not belonging to the right fraternity.
As I understand it, the novels of James Joyce have never gone out of print and remain some of the strongest backlist sellers in any publisher’s catalog. If Joyce was around today his royalties would make him richer than Stephen King.
Joyce wrote SENTENCES that ran on for 12 pages. I think he knew his market. Professors and librarians love these garbled books that no one understands- so the orders keep coming. If he wrote popular westerns in plain language who would remember his name today?
#2 by Dennis on 06/01/2006 - 4:12 am
I depends on what you are trying to say, but when you are trying to make a point, you need to write in a similar way to the way people speak. Differentiate each point, allow room for the reader to grasp what is being said and written. Paragraph structure affects the way the reader interprets and understand what is being said. A piece with shorter paragraph structure has a different intonation to one with longer paragraphs.
#3 by Elizabeth on 06/01/2006 - 2:32 pm
Yes!
Are you writing to communicate or are you writing to show off?
I made myself at least mildly unpopular in a previous graduate
program by complaining about writers feeling obligated to show off
instead of communicate.
This was in a program allegedly teaching technical writing and
allegedly focusing on usability.
#4 by Bob on 06/01/2006 - 11:54 pm
Fini, until you said this I took it for granted you were one of those guys who made straight
As and drifted through your PhD and didn’t take it seriously.
I’ve met you. You have the level of mind to do that.
In the old days you would grabbed a PhD in a week the way Marx did.