It was a Dark and Stormy Night blah blah blah

byfoxxfyrre

500 followers

Updated 7 years ago

I've been doing a lot of research on the web for various things that I might use for posts for my site.

I've also stopped into quite a few fellow WA websites and left comments and I did notice a difference with many WA sites-especially when it comes to writing styles.

I'm aware that WA teaches to keep the writing style conversational. I'm also aware that we're taught to break up large chunks of text to make it easier for the reader and keep their attention. As a result of my websurfing, I've noticed that there are two extremes in writing.

I've seen this style:

Which is probably the most famous run-on sentence known to man, and Bart Simpson.

(Although, it's probably not the longest run-on sentence; which, by the way, I probably have the record for, but it wouldn't be documented anywhere, not even in Wikipedia (that I know of) but I could be wrong because my English Lit. Professor threatened to publish mine as an example what not to do in a final exam, or was it my mid-term--too many years have gone by to recall correctly).

I've seen some that are arranged in paragraph form averaging four maybe five sentences each. Some short. And some really long sentences intermingled in those paragraphs. None of the paragraphs, were staggered with shorter sentences between them to give the reader a mental break.

Some of these paragraphs contained more than a single topic, concept or thought. Which can also be confusing for the reader.

And.

I've seen the other extreme.

One single sentence.

Each with its own line.

Some longer than others.

All of the sentences are complete thoughts and correct in grammar.

But some sentences were a natural extension of the previous sentence.

Should some of those sentences be merged into a paragraph to make a clear statement?

They weren't.

A few posts were structured like this.

With only images, lists, or links to break up the flow of sentences.

When I read a post structured like this, two things happen: 1) I start to read too fast and overlook what might be important information, and 2) I get tired just as quickly as I do with the bulky full paragraphs style of writing.

Which brings me to my point with writing styles called pacing.

Pacing is a writing style which does take into consideration of how a reader reads.

Pacing can be used in formal writing such as for a thesis. In formal writing, pacing has its place in sentence structure to avoid really long sentences when you have to convey a lot of information. Paragraphs are not paced, because formal writing is usually structured to a set amount of paragraphs.

Pacing is especially important in fiction writing. Think of how larger paragraphs are broken up with conversation for the reader in any of your recent novel reads. Think of how the author used pacing to keep your attention. Or build up excitement, or scare you.

The only place you won't find any pacing is in legal writing. (And you think I'm long winded)

Pacing can also play an important part in writing posts for your websites. It can help to keep that conversational tone we want for our posts. Pacing can also help focus the readers attention and comprehension of your subject matter.

Please keep in mind that this is just an observation and I have seen both extremes of styles in writing.

But I am seeing more and more of the single short sentence one per line style of writing on posts. I think that this style is taking what WA means as conversational writing a little too literally.

Break your writing style up. Be natural in your tone. It will all come together :)

If anything, I'm probably more guilty of the first style I presented for you.

TTFN

Frank aka Foxxfyrre

PS. I do like to end posts with TTFN meaning TaTa for Now, and I do it on my website too.

Earlier today, I checked into Google analytics, and my TTFN was shown as a keyword that was searched for.

And it only ranked at 320. How many people could be searching for TTFN? It was my giggle on google for the day.