Member-only story
WRITING
What Happened to Paragraphs?
The trend of the one-sentence paragraph
If you’re an avid reader, you’ll notice the trend toward entire articles containing one-sentence paragraphs. It’s prevalent on Medium and hundreds of blogs across the internet. As soon as I see a story full of one-sentence paragraphs, I immediately click away. There is something about the lack of flow and overall choppiness that makes me not want to read what’s written. While it’s subjective, the contents within usually reflect that lack of flow, and the quality is, more often than not, lacking as well. I don’t care what the subject is, I’m not interested. It tells me you are a wannabe LinkedIn “thought leader” or a content creator, neither of which I want to follow.
I’ve heard several arguments for stories full of one-sentence paragraphs — they are easier to read on mobile, and it’s for emphasis. But neither of these makes sense. Most reputable online newspapers (except for the BBC, it seems) and skilled writers avoid the one-sentence paragraph trend, even for mobile; they write to provide the reader with information in a coherent and easy-to-follow manner by grouping sentences to support the main idea. Sure, they throw in the occasional one-sentence paragraph for emphasis, but that is rare. They write multiple-sentence paragraphs, regardless of the size of the…
