Re:When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?
by coliveira on Monday March 08, 2021 @11:49AM
(#26387897)
English is not my first language, so it astonishes me that some people really think that short sentences make good writing. Anyone can write bad prose using short sentences. Moreover, by writing in this way the language loses any kind of spice, so it's not a surprise that journalism and technical texts are so unpalatable. Another consequence is that even educated people never stop sounding like they're talking to a ten year old.
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Re:When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?
by coliveira on Monday March 08, 2021 @01:22PM
(#26389448)
But in a sense I realize why this is a problem in English: German an some latin languages have grammatical structure to make it easier to create and understand long phrases. English lacks much of that structure. So, long phrases are difficult to parse. Compare for example Proust novels written in English and in his French original. In English it is almost gibberish, even in good translations.
Re:When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?
by ghaff on Monday March 08, 2021 @01:42PM
(#26389739)
That's probably true. I would have had to work to parse the first sentence in that article. The other thing going on is that, for many situations, the use of punctuation within long sentences to help the reader has sort of fallen out of fashion relative to breaking long sentences up. It's probably also more acceptable to use sentence fragments in certain types of prose.
Re:When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?
by com2kid on Monday March 08, 2021 @03:00PM
(#26390731)
> The other thing going on is that, for many situations, the use of punctuation within long sentences to help the reader has sort of fallen out of fashion relative to breaking long sentences up.
Semicolons, colons, and dashes, are rarely used now days.
Heck I am impressed when I see a dash properly used, I myself cannot lay claim to such knowledge. I am almost 100% certain that their usage was not taught to me in either school or college.
Re:When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?
by ghaff on Monday March 08, 2021 @04:55PM
(#26392192)
I use em dashes a fair bit (and have to remember the spacing style of the publication I'm writing for). But I'm much more inclined to break a sentence in two rather than use a semicolon unless there are two very connected thoughts.