Back to Basics (Part 3) – A Tale of Two Sentences

OK.  Reviewing lessons 1 & 2: Keep it simple and write short sentences.

Lesson 3: Put two sentences together (and only two) and your writing usually will look better.

Mark Twain once apologized to a pen pal that he didn’t have time to write a short letter … so he was writing a long one.  Nobody really likes to read long stuff.  War and Peace is more a double-dare challenge than it is a page-turner designed for cuddling up to a fireplace on a stormy night – it’s not even particularly noble literature.  A Tale of Two Cities is a ton better, but I’ll wager less than 1 person in 1,000 has ever actually READ it.  Sure, most people, if put on the spot to quote the opening line of a novel, will spout off “It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times …”  Some significantly fewer in number will be able to expound that it was also “the age of wisdom … foolishness … belief (and) … incredulity.”  Those who can actually reach the far end of Dickens’ 84-word sentence (“we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way”) can likely be counted on my two hands … and maybe a toe or two on a good day.  (Second place, BTW, on the opening-lines challenge: “It was a dark and stormy night.” … but most people don’t believe that’s the start of any for-reals book.)

But I digress.

Raise your hand if you read paragraphs 1, 2 and 4 above.  Skimmed #3, I’ll wager, trying to get to the point.  Just like the Writer, apparently.  The Defense rests …

(However – readership likely would have spiked had I split paragraph 2 into, say, four of them – same 207 words, you understand, same bulk; just less physically imposing.)

Short paragraphs not only address the challenge of the reader’s “will to read,” but they’re easy on readers’ eyes.  Long paragraphs cross the eyes.  Two sentences or fewer, please.

Graphic design gurus preach an optimal width for a line of type of 25 to 50 letters.  The width of the page you’re reading right now is actually a tweak wider, which means its readability might improve slightly if I pushed the type size up by a point or two (not that big a deal on a large computer screen).

Line-width theory involves the ability of the eye to read a line, right to left, and then rebound accurately to lock on the first word of the next line.  Too long, and the eye loses connection; too short and a Ping-Pong game erupts in your eye sockets.

Instructors dictate the parameters of term papers: 12-point, double-spaced, Helvetica font, 1/2-inch margins, etc., etc., etc.  (FYI, sans-serif typefaces like Helvetica, Arial and Verdana are actually poor choices for this kind of wide format.  They lack the little “serifs” – the hooks characteristic of fonts like Times, Courier or Georgia.  If you look at the latter three along a line of text, the sequential serifs create the optical illusion of underlining, which helps keep the eye comfortably on-track.)

But if you control the format of a document, you might want to choose a narrower column (or multiple columns) and/or a larger type size to facilitate easy reading.

Instructors also traditionally dictate paragraph structure: Topic sentence, argument, exposition, exposition, exposition, summary, restatement of the topic sentence, new paragraph.  Wow … one seven sentence paragraph, and you’ve easily got a page covered (with at least four or five paragraphs to go), along with a guarantee that NO ONE will actually read your work – not even el prof-bo, who’s long since deferred to flinging papers across the room and awarding “A’s” to the ones that fly farthest.

You’d think tenured professors see enough gray across the dinner table when the go home in the evening, without soliciting a lot of gray text from students.  Corporate marketers spend big bucks on full-color design and printing, only to muck up the project with a bunch of gray-looking text.  Actually, I'd bet most profs would neither notice nor care if you provided a bunch of two-sentence paragraphs, so long as they were well-researched, full of thought, and to the point.

Use your head.  Use narrow columns, big type, headlines, photos, logos, subheads, pullout quotes … whatEVER.  But take a cue from the old shampoo commercial and wash that gray right out of your hair … or your written document, as the case may be.

Next: Back to Basics (Part 4) – Write!

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