What do you do when you write walls of text?

Post Reply New Topic

I used to do nothing. And I wondered why no one replied to me. After a few years of that crap I tried to spilt up paragraphs summarize myself whenever I wrote a lot. That worked pretty well.

Later instead of writing about stuff, I would just ask other people for their opinions and reply to them later in the thread. I got a lot of replies when I did that. Unfortunately that got me into some trouble. I went back to my old strategy and I got way less replies .

I've recently started a tumblr blog. I didn't start one before because I thought it was just full of dumb gifs and people copying each other. I though that no one would care about text posts.

I developed a new strategy after I joined tumblr. I still did the usual stuff. If I went off on a tangent I would start a new post instead of trying to summarize it. I really enjoy doing that. It makes me feel productive.

I'm glad you found your niche--at least for now.

I'm not a "wall of text" kind of guy myself. I write in what I would call "breaths." Usually, a "breath" is a sentence or a short paragraph.

I end up being stumped if I'm done proofreading and submitting it. I'm terrible at generalizing, and still trying to attempt to which fails a lot.

One time my friend want me to review a movie; I end up telling the entire story instead because I generally have no real opinions about it. On tests they want an essay; I end up enumerating with too many unnecessary words. Yes, I strongly admit that I generally I fail at this, and I always think my words always fails regardless. XD And I couldn't change the strategy well.

I usually look for tangents and anecdotes that don't really mean anything since it's just one perspective,best to just edit them out or make them more brief. But if it's something that I think would benefit people from reading, I wouldn't hesitate to go off on a full essay, though I know few people will bother to read it, but it might be something meaningful to those few people, even if they don't respond.

have you tried Thoughts?

http://thoughts.com/

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of wading through one long wall of text, myself. I'm a huge fan of frequent paragraphical breaks.

A thing I notice between WP and my teen forum, is that in my teen forum everyone is very concise. Here way too many people write way too much stuff. It's like sometimes a page with 15 replies contains 100,000 words of text.

Maybe WP should be like Twitter and have a limit. Probably at least 50% of what gets posted to WP doesn't get read because it's a wall of text. No wonder the system crashing has always been a problem.

If it had a limit, people would probably have multiple posts in a row.

Due to my mathematical background, I try to be as concise as possible. Since, in math the more simple answer is always preferable rather than going on a long ramble of pointlessness.

I would NEVER limit the amount of writing one person could do. I'm not a "wall of text" type of guy--and, sometimes, I see some people writing quite a lot which could be expressed in fewer words.

I used to be guilty of that when I was younger.

But then.....maybe the person is writing that way for a reason. Maybe he/she wants to impart his/her personality into his/her writing. This is what creativity is all about.

Sometimes, though, I don't really have the time to read "walls of text." If I'm having a debate with someone, though, I try to read EVERYTHING a person writes; and I expect a person to read everything I wrote. It's irritating when somebody ASSumes something without reading everything I wrote. The media does this too--all the time.

All in all: sometimes, a wall of text (with suitably separated paragraphs) might be the only way the person could express what he/she wants to express. Sometimes, though, the "wall of text" could acquire the character of a bunch of "word salads."

I always laugh when I see a wall of text because I think of this picture:



When you are writing something, it should be like a waterfall, meaning each sentence should pour the reader from line to line effortlessly. That goes both for the narrative and the narration.

When a reader sees a mountain of text, they tend to skip it because it makes it seem like too big a commitment.

It is pretty amazing how restructuring the block of text, even before editing the content, can make a piece far more inviting.

It depends. Sometimes (probably most of the time) I get bored halfway through and scrap the whole thing. Regardless of whether I submit it or not, I always split long posts into paragraphs. Reading an unbroken 'wall' of text hurts my eyes, especially if it's poorly punctuated or incoherent. I also sometimes try to 'soften' my language before posting, but usually fail woefully at it.

If a piece of writing is poorly punctuated, it could become almost incomprehensible. The insertion of a comma, as opposed to the omission of a comma, could change the meaning of even a simple phrase radically.

I try to keep my posts short, unless I am compiling a list. My longest posts are written when I am particularly angry or upset about something. Otherwise, I try to keep to the Five-Point Essay format.

Maybe people have noticed, but when I talk about something I'm passionate about or interested in, I can reach multiple paragraphs of length. I've always put a strong emphasis on grammar and punctuation and where and when to line break. It's also a strain on my eyes when I see a literal wall of text.

If it's something that's interesting, relevant, and meaningful, a poster could write a book for all I care.

It's better, to me, if the piece is punctuation properly, and has suitable paragraph breaks.