Your opinion - wall of china vs wall of text ?

I think I understand what you are talking about

I always find it hard if a whole big forum post is bunched and contracted together into one paragraph xD

Maybe that's why my posts aren't terribly long o.o
I don't know :3

 

I've seen posts of about a hundred lines without any punctuation, let alone paragraphs. I have a rule, called not reading walls of text.

 

I wouldn't say I have PROBLEMS reading it, I CAN do it, I just usually don;t. You could write a book detailing your problems and I'll read it but if you don't punctuate or leave gaps it increases the chances I won't read it... :/

 

I hate, hate walls of text. There is no reason why it can't be separated into paragraphs. It makes it so much easier to read.

I usually don't read walls of text, it's just not a fun experience. Top it off with bad punctuation and bad grammar and ugh, no thanks.

While I realize that this is a casual forum and messages don't have to be perfect (I'm far from it :lol, that doesn't mean that we should give up everything we learned in English class.

 

What I don't get is how punctuationless wall-of-text posters can think other people will want to read it. Do they not bother reading anyone else's posts?

 

When I see a wall-of-text thread I don't even start reading it but leave.

 

A new paragraph/line suggests that you are beginning a new thought. This way, your ideas on a certain subject or whatever are organized neatly, and easy to read.

If I spot a well written, wall of text, that makes sense for it to be a wall of text, then I am totally fine with reading it. However, if it's just someone being a jackass who's too lazy to use any proper writing conventions or paragraphing techniques, then fuck, I'm so out of there.

 

walls of text make it hard for me to read if i ever do a long post i try to break it up as much as possible.

 

Likewise with popular opinion in this thread, walls of text are never fun. Though I can't say that I enjoy it when posts are written in a form that cuts the lines too short either. Almost as if its written in a stanza or rhythmic pentameter form, but its not poetry...

Paragraphs. That's all I ask for.

 

From personal experience on other forums I've posted on, I've actually had other members and even moderators thank me for using correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Dey wur tyrd uv peeps tpyin lyk diss.

 

I find it's almost as difficult to read a 30 line single paragraph no punctuation post, as One with Excessive use of Capitals, as
a
Shatner-like
stream
of short
words.

Doesn't mean I won't read them or at least try, but if I have to go back 2-3 times to figure out the meaning of the post I'll usually skip over (especially when the topic is somewhat trivial).

There is such a thing as writing a continuous "brain dump" to get your ideas out, but usually you'd go back and add paragraph breaks to separate thoughts.

To quote Jerry Macguire, "Help me help you" .

 

I despair when I see such texts.

Many people who write believe in the exercise of stream-of-consciousness spilling, but it makes reading very unpleasant and often confusing.

My cardinal rule is to make it as easy as possible for my readers to get the message. With regard to brevity; I learned an essential rule from Strunk and White's The Elements of Style: Let every word tell!

 

And yet James Joyce became so famous! Though I never really could get into Ulysses, except those last few pages at the end...that's very pretty, but I've alwys just skipped to the end:

"...my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

---James Joyce

He would have never been so famous on the inter-webs!

 

I was capable of writing properly at thirteen, and I did so consistently. I hold other thirteen year olds to the same standard. As for a stream of consciousness method, they're writing on a public forum, for the benefit of others (even if they are just looking for help, they still need to interact with others), and they should at least show their readers the respect of coherent and legible posts.

 

I don't read them, either. It's too much work for what I come to the Internet for: socialization and stimulation. Every post I make and every thread I read is gambling on maybe finding that along with passing some time, and a wall of text is the biggest gamble out there.

 

I'm too lazy for that shit.
I try to keep things brief.
Brevity is wit, they say.

When I do write paragraphs, I try to break them up, because I'm pretty sure nobody on the internet wants to deal with a wall of text.

 

Well HuskyPup, if we're going to quote James Joyce, this, to me is the best wall of text in all of his works; from his short story entitled The Dead:

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Now that's what I call writing well.