Paragraph Breaks

[CourtFool]

Use them.

I apologize now for coming off as a grammar nazi. I do not claim to be perfect. I am not expecting others to be.

I assume, since you posted, that you want me to read it. Or someone¹. Be nice to your prospective readers and they will be more likely to invest time in your writing. One of the most fundamental ways to do that is to include paragraph breaks.

Not everyone cares. Not everyone is going to be as picky as this stuck up llama, but do you really want to take the chance? There are plenty of other reasons for any prospective reader to pass your post by. Why add another one?

Here are some simple rules to keep in mind.

Start a new paragraph every 3-5 sentences. When you begin a new line of thinking or a new argument, start a new paragraph. If you really think all 30 some sentences absolutely must be in the same paragraph, you seriously need to re-read your post and verify you are not saying the same thing over and over again². Efficiency trumps verbosity.

That is all.


¹See? Breaking grammar rules myself.
²Run on sentence anyone?

[RogerWilco]

I agree with you. It always amazes me how bad the writing style, grammar and spelling is on forums that are mainly populated by Americans writing in their native tongue. Even such simple things as switching on the spell checker in their browser apparently eludes most people.

English is a foreign language to me, but I often see native speakers make mistakes that I haven't made since I was in my early teens. Things like their/they're/there and similar errors amaze me.

By the way, how do you make the superscripts and foot notes?

[CourtFool]

I usually type my posts in a word editor before posting and then cut and paste. In MS Word, click on Insert | Symbol…, then scroll down to the special characters and pick superscript number. Copy and paste it to manually create the footer.