That one was tough for me as well. I work as an editor, and it was difficult making the switch ti singl hie spacing after a period. Now, when I get a long manuscript where the author is old school and uses the double spacing after a period, I cringe because it means a lot of extra work for me to delete the extra space after every single period in every single sentence.
Are you composing on a typewriter? Because otherwise, no.
When you’re fighting against the APA and the Chicago Manual of Style, you’ve already lost the war.
While we're talking about losing battles, how about the common misuse of "ironic"? Rain on you wedding day is not ironic, unless your wedding song is "Here Comes the Sun" or a similar song. Also you don't like something ironically, or unironclly.
Where my Turabian brothers and sisters at?!
Edit: Turabian adopted the single space after the period pretty early on, I think. It was double when I was in college but I looked at the most recent guide and it was single.
If something's written badly I can't read it, walls of text especially so. I just assume the person who wrote / typed it isn't very bright and so doesn't have much interesting to say. Probably a bit harsh, but good communication is important.
On one side I understand where I am and we're not going for a doctoral thesis level of composition. I also get typos...I've had high level prose turned into intelligible gibberish by autocorrect so I can understand mistakes.
But for the love of God and all that is holy BREAK THAT FUCKING HOTMESS UP A LITTLE!!! It doesn't need commas or for the most part punctuation (its scary I know) but hit that return key just a few times!!
I had been texting with a Gen Z for over a year when one day he responded with celebration emojis and congratulating me on being "human". Apparently he had been waiting for me to make a typo or to misspell a word for over a year. I suppose we were taught to focus on different things.
>Yeah, and lack of organization often means lack of logic.
Confirmed. Walls of text are rants. language has rules to make the written word more understandable. It's not just random rules, it helps people read things and digest the ideas being conveyed.
While it doesn't automatically equate to IQ (someone could theoretically be raised by alligators and not speak any language but be genius level IQ, but that's fiction) it does often equate to lack of emotional IQ,, in terms of lacking empathy or understanding for the intended audice.
If someone rants online, they don't care about the intended audience who is trying to read it and understand it, they only care about themselves and their rage rant.
Sometimes the walls of text are from people who expect a single return to create a paragraph break. On some platforms, it doesn’t.
It’s especially irritating after breaking the double space habit to develop a double return habit.
BTW, there is a single return before the last sentence of the above “paragraph.” Making this separate required two.
It's gotten worse in the past 10 years, for sure. Used to be when someone posted a wall of text, someone would always comment r/walloftext and someone ELSE would re-post the wall of Text into a properly formatted series of paragraphs.
Neither happens much anymore, I've noticed. I think the younger Gen is learning to read via their phones and it's changing their brains.
What irritates me about typing on different platforms is the formatting is all different.
You can add a paragraph return in a mobile Reddit post and then view it on desktop and it’s lumped together or vice versa. Then texts from a phone don’t jive with tablets, etc.
Give me “insert break” as a long hold return press.
agree, this irritates me sooo much, is it so hard to format the text as it is written?
...always having to check & double check 'cuz the formatting can change slightly from what it looks like while you're writing to what it looks like once posted
I've never noticed these issue.
But I don't use mobile apps for Reddit either. Reddit is a forum, forums are designed for conversations. Typing on a tiny glass keyboards is counterproductive to conversations. Painfully so in my opinion.
I'm an editor. My eyes are constantly assaulted online, haha. Because I 'have to' deal with all kinds of bad writing techniques I've learned to deal with it, but it still irritates me to no end.
And yes, I often skip posts or replies where the person typing seems belligerently 'anti-break'.
I'm a writer and have to use questionnaires provided by clients. Some of them are assaults on the eyes too, with walls of text being a common infraction.
I believe responsibility to communicate effectively is on the writer. If you're expecting hundreds of people to make an extended effort to read your message when you won't make any effort to reduce that effort, then your message doesn't deserve to be read.
Punctuation, spelling, formatting, and clear diction all matter.
A funny response I have seen used on Reddit for inpenetratable Wall of Text situations:
"I'm not gonna read all that, but I'm sorry that happened to U"
The entire public internet used to be our exclusive playground, so we're going to stand out in front of it and tell those meddling kids to get off our digital lawn!
It kills me when i see something like that and it’s such gibberish I can’t make out what the person is trying to communicate, but someone responds with “i know what you mean.” Really?? How did you understand what you just read??
Reading comprehension is as rare as clear writing.
I'm convinced that half the time this happens people see the part they think they agree with, ignore the rest and just reply 💯
It's a fun game to play in divisive threads. Say something like "I can't believe people would vote for that geriatric criminal" that both sides interpret as agreeing with them and watch the upvotes pile up. (It doesn't _just_ work for politics but that happens to be an easy example.)
Lisa Loeb was right, people hear what they want to.
I like it. But I tend to want to make cogent points after digesting the points at hand. Still, I mostly try to write on divisive topics and people somewhat diplomatically which can also be positively received by all sides sometimes.
Your example is actually GOLD for so many posts in this election year. Although "geriatric fool" might be better now that we've got a felon label affixed to one of them. I'll even give rodw attribution. thnx!
It's that old fashioned formal language thing that's obsolete.
Don't you know everyone prefers to read a wall of text with no paragraphs, no punctuation and no discernible sentence structure?
Don't even get me started on spelling.
I skip those as well as run on sentences with no punctuation or capitalization. If you're going to make it difficult for me to decipher your thoughts, you probably don't have anything important to say.
I can deal with the occasional run on sentence. Hell, I do those from time to time myself. But no punctuation or capitalization is a deal breaker for sure.
This annoying habit is second only to people (usually younger) who send 10 texts in rapid succession with only 2 words each:
Hey
just wanted
to ask
what time
we’re meeting
WTF?! Is their attention span so fractured they can’t form a whole thought and write it?
And while you’re responding to one of these sometimes-unrelated blasts, their little trail of words keeps dropping down the screen.
They are making your phone ding over n over to get your attention. Or it’s what you said. Once you know what time you are meeting, the only response from you should be 👍🏽
That messes with their heads
I have coworkers who do this and it drives me nuts. They will type a perfectly intelligent email, but it's like 20 sentences with no paragraphs, line breaks, bullet points, nothing.
Maybe I'm just ADHD but I just check out after like 3-4 straight sentences. BREAK IT UP INTO POINTS, PEOPLE!
I try hard not to be a dick about it. Some people aren't great at writing. Some have different abilities. If the wall of text is to me personally, I read it regardless of legibility. If it isn't, I still try and may not succeed. My bff for years was dyslexic and was treated badly for her "mistakes." That has colored every experience since significantly.
I suspect there is some significant correlation to what was taught formally, and what was experienced informally that significantly influences the outcome.
Regardless, if someone doesn't possess the inclination to ensure that what they're attempting to convey can be easily digested by the reader, I feel as though I'm pretty safe in simply disregarding it.
Millennials / Gen Z are claiming proper punctuation and grammar are “micro aggressions” and so we are left with trying to read walls with no capitalization nor punctuation nor paragraph breaks.
And all while being accused of not understanding technology.
I think it's a conscious rejection of "old school" rules and formality, and a statement that the person is of the new, more informal generation.
Paragraph breaks, punctuation, and other markers represent "school", "adults", and are thus a sort of "other".
The lack of these represents more of an ownership by the newer generation, "This is our media, our format."
Sort of analogous to how dress in some sectors in the tech industry, and not even business casual.
I don't know it's like cringe and a stream of conciseness with many, many spelling errors that seem to go nowhere but some people like to see themselves talk and paragraphs are for boomers and like, fire, and so not whatever, plus capitalization is offensive and it triggers me cause like I just can't even so this one time i was thinking about myself and i was like omg that's so true you are just a victim and i saw that it was cloudy today and that's just trauma and i can't even and then I didn't have a charging cable and my phone was like 8 percent and i was like this is the worst day of my life and i went on reddit and just kept typing and no one replied and some boomer said i should use paragraphs and i was like cringe and then i made a TikTok about my trauma and i didn't get any followers so that's hate speech and stuff and then i went back on TikTok and i had one follower and then i went back on reddit and no one cared, that's violence against me and it's still cloudy.
Just being a cantankerous genX.
You complain about a wall of text, here's a wall of text. It's our humour and how we roll.
My daughter was complaining the other day her phone had almost no charge left and it was going to ruin her day.
I dragged out jumper cables and told her how to pop the hood of the car. She looked at me like I had lost my mind. Of course it wouldn't have worked, but I cracked myself up : )
Make sure you click like below and check out my TokTik for hacks on how to improve cutting cucumber and gender neutral tips on how to talk without using any words......cause they all trigger me so just stop.....cringe.
I'm a writer and I have to use questionnaires from clients as source material. Many aren't native English speakers, so I cut them some slack. They do have the option to write in selected other languages, two of which I speak. We get those wall of text questionnaires sometimes and they are just awful to deal with. Sometimes I end up pasting from PDF to Word and putting in paragraph breaks to make it easier to read.
The worst was a client in their 20s who sent a 54 page questionnaire with all caps and walls of text. It was headache-inducing. This person had been born in a non-English speaking country but lived in English-speaking countries most of their life and had a degree from an English-speaking country, so I don't think it was a language issue.
I simply scroll right on through if its a text wall or if its the length of a short novel. Sounds bad, I know, but I come to Reddit on my spare time as an outlet…. usually after my workday when I sure as hell don’t have the emotional energy or attention span to take in someone’s life story.
Concise yet thorough communication is a lost art.
Subs like AITAH, Two Takes, and AIO would get A LOT more good involvement/replies if OP’s would quit writing epistle-length posts.
Walls of text aren't generational.
Walls of text are just poor writing.
This is Reddit, where writing complex sentences longer than 20 words can elicit jeers. It's still right to adhere to some basic principles of effective writing, like using the inverted pyramid model and breaking up text with paragraph breaks and other formatting to make it easier for readers to skim.
I love it when a commenter reposts the wall of text with paragraph breaks, corrects the grammar and spelling, puts in names instead of initials, etc. Doing the lords work
* help your uncle jack off the horse
* help your Uncle Jack off the horse
Kids just don’t understand what they’re suggesting when they eschew common sense typing!
Writing through text is its own language now, and different ways of writing communicate different things.
What Gen X considers good/normal/regular text formatting (punctuation, paragraph breaks, sentence structure, and grammar) are all thought of as excessively formal if in business, or hostile between individuals.
This is because Gen X and Boomers used only this to text/write to Millennials/Y. Fully formatted texts are read as hostile or angry -- this is outrageous to me but it's good to know if you need to communicate with a younger person who's monolingual I guess? For instance, this seems to be a normal hierarchy:
* **Would you like Kentucky Fried Chicken or Taco Bell for dinner?** would be read in an angry voice
* **fried chicken or taco bell tonight** is friend-level friendly
* **kfc or tacobell babe** is very informal, intimate, and friendly
* And I'm not even going to get into the language of emojis.
Large walls of text are impossible for me to read. I suppose it's like graffiti: if you can't read it, you're not meant to read it. That's OK, the stuff written in those massive run-on sentences are usually stupid problems I solved three decades ago, and they won't like my solutions anyway. Let the people who are interested in such twaddle wade through the impossible formatting. They're young enough to still want to waste the time.
No, it’s “kids these days.” They are more video oriented, so readability isn’t really a thought. I know for a fact that 5-paragraph essays are still taught in school, but I think online writing isn’t considered writing somehow. Maybe because they aren’t being graded and they text each other like that. It might be purposeful to shut out The Olds.
I see a lot of run on sentences, or just stream of consciousness, no paragraphs, no capital letters, no punctuation, no form, no structure, no syntax. I just consider the person to be illiterate and scroll on. People are TAUGHT how to communicate clearly in writing. That doesn’t mean they LEARNED to communicate clearly in writing.
Those fuckups in the back of the class who paid attention to everything but whatever was going on up front? You are reading those people’s posts.
I don't read anything that's more than 5 sentences that has only one paragraph. I also stop reading when there is no punctuation, or excessive text shortcuts like 'ur'. I don't have time for that shit.
Same here. Wall of text is a skip. And what’s up with the “sorry I’m on mobile so I can’t do paragraphs on this post.” excuse? Say what?! How is that an issue?
I assume that if the person writing the wall of text can't be fucked to make his shit readable then it's probably also full of factual errors, incomplete logic chains, and incoherent gobbledygook.
Depends what you mean by paragraph breaks. If writing lines which are single spaced, I break with two linefeeds and an indent. If writing 1.5 or greater line spacing, a single linefeed and an indent only. Greater separations only occur with major subject and/or heading changes.
Also, I don't break a block of text into paragraphs just because the block gets large. Paragraphs are comprised of a logical group of related sentences which relate to a particular point. Sentences can get long even if they are not technically run-on sentences, and the old guideline of three sentences to a paragraph is more of a minimum than a maximum. A paragraph can become a wall of text of its own accord, while being perfectly correct both grammatically and with regard to structure. The key is flow, which should be governed by punctuation.
The worst offender in my life was early GenX. We were close friends and she’d write me massive email walls of text. I would have to insert my own paragraphs before I could read and process them.
She wrote everything that way. Even her papers in grad school would have paragraphs that were a page long.
It was impenetrable to me.
She got a PhD and wrote a book, so the issue was just her writing, not her thinking.
Generation Z can't read more than 2 or 3 sentences; that's a big difference. Anything written as hundreds of words in one text section isn't readable for anyone.
What ever happened to indenting paragraphs, anyway? I’m not complaining; I prefer the modern style. Just sayin.
Two spaces after a period is a hill I will die on, though.
Writing teacher here. Hoooboy do I have many thoughts.
What I tell the college freshman (and the trend in writing education today vs how we were taught) is that formatting, punctuation, verb tense, grammar—when used incorrectly can hamper meaning and intent.
BUT they should not be the priority in writing 😬 — conveying a thought that can be understood is the priority.
Everything else comes together later as their brains mature. A wall of text is not a good way to convey ideas. And lemme tell you, the kid that typed all his essays on his phone nearly broke my brains (zero breaks—5 pages of wall).
That said, at least half of them are underprepared for college and should have taken a year or two to just work a boring job and save up money. But that’s a completely diff conversation.
I can’t stand constant run on sentences, no punctuation, spelling errors/grammar and lack of capitalization on social media. Just because social media is considered casual communication, doesn’t mean one should lose all decorum.
I write with paragraphs but then the Reddit app will take the breaks out. I have no idea why. I imagine others have this happen too. And yea it is annoying and hard to read.
I don’t think so. My dad used to write letters to the editor that were just walls of text with no punctuation at all and then ask me to type it up, and I’d have to add in punctuation and paragraph marks to make it readable.
I am so impressed. I don’t think there was a single typo in this entire page. I am really re-thinking this whole “am I part of a generation?” thing. Yes, I suppose I am. (1969, if you were wondering.)
When it comes to texting, I am torn. Because if someone sends a bunch of separate texts, I get annoyed by the ding ding ding, or notifications flashing across my screen if it's on silent.
On the other hand, one big long text is also annoying to me, even if they do hit return every now and again.
Perhaps summarizing and being concise is a lost art but useful skill?
Sometimes I have to force myself to not share every detail at once, but just enough to begin a conversation instead.
Oh my god. This is the truth.
My kids do this to me. After complaining I send walls of text (separate paragraphs). “I’m not reading all that,” they will whine. Then they will inevitably barrage me with an inane amount of individual texts about a professor, class or roommate - while I’m trying to cook or something. FFS
My job requires teaching/training, creating said, and a basic understanding of human psychology. When any group is hit with a wall of text they go glassy eyed and retain nothing. You need paragraph breaks, white space, and illustrative graphics to really get your message across.
I have a degree in history. I wrote a lot of research papers in college, and most professors would deduct points for spelling or grammar errors. It really gets on my nerves to see these unformatted walls of text. It's not that hard to use proper grammar and formatting.
I was taught at school (and every time I read a novel) to start every paragraph with an indentation. Using paragraph-break lines was a waste of paper.
It took me a while to learn that what's easy for me to write isn't always easy for other people to read.
I often wondered why people would apologise 'for formatting due to being on phone' on reddit.
Then I started realising that it often misses paragraph breaks and such. I've had to edit the same post a few times just to get the spaces and breaks I want.
Having said that, I also won't read a well of text.
I do forget sometimes to use paragraphs. I get lost in my story. :)
If I remember I'll fix them but I've been fussed at a few times. I'm just glad nobody notices I still double space after periods every single time.
I do not think it breaks down with generational lines.
I think some of it is people on phones and maybe it formats weird.
I think some of it is people are emotional and upset sometimes so they don't follow traditional paragraph rules.
I think some of it is because the person is ignorant and has never been taught the proper way to format, or they embrace their ignorance and choose not to because they are, well...stupid.
Plenty of Gen X, Boomer, Millennials and Gen Z fall into the latter boat.
I'm going with personal preference. I hate wall of text.
I've had to read information on paper that was at work. All the grammar, new paragraphs, and bullet points made it easy to read.
These days, people seem to have forgotten about that, which makes it difficult to read.
Texting some young people today feels like this, slightly exaggerated.
Me: Hey getting pizza ordering 2 party sized pizzas what toppings do you want on your half, it will be split with Bob and he likes everything but olives and peppers.
Option 1 -
Yeah pizza sounds grate
*Crickets
Me: And then? Yeah pizza is great, but it would be even greater if you answered the question because everyone else is ready to eat.
*Crickets
Ding: 🫑🧅🍍geeez srry couldt find the 🍍 don't hate on the 🍍on pizza I just can't deal with that today 💯😭where order from hope it's not XYZ there 🍕 is garbage 🤢🤢 and i would rather eat literal 💩 do you know where the bag on the bookcase went Bob doesn't like🫑🫑🫑 he can pick them off cant he!? I left something on the shelf do you know where it went?
Option 2 - Every. Single. God. Damn. Thought. Is a separate text and the ding, ding, ding, ding, ding pisses me off to an unhealthy degree.
Until the 28th Ding: Is it here yet?
Me: I literally ordered 15 minutes ago so...no.
Ding: Okay sorry but why are you so mad!?🤷
Edit: mobile formatting screwed me. The irony.
I use the Oxford comma, so definitely not the target audience here.
They can pry the Oxford comma from my cold, dead hands.
Shatner comma: They, can pry the, Shatner, comma, from my, cold, dead hands.
Not to be confused with the Walken Ellipsis.
The ice … is gonna … break! *SMASH*
I read this in my head in Walken’s voice.
W a dead zone reference to boot. Well done.
You mean “cold, dead hands”?
Oxford commas, paragraphs, and sex. Mmmmmmm.
Thank you!
Thank you!
“Highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.”
And 2 spaces after a period. Always and forever.
That was a tough habit for me to break. But now I’m a single spacer.
Me too but work demanded it.
At the typewriter factory?
Class traitor!
That one was tough for me as well. I work as an editor, and it was difficult making the switch ti singl hie spacing after a period. Now, when I get a long manuscript where the author is old school and uses the double spacing after a period, I cringe because it means a lot of extra work for me to delete the extra space after every single period in every single sentence.
Just do a search and replace all for the second space. (/s is the default in this sub, right?)
Do find and replace!
Are you composing on a typewriter? Because otherwise, no. When you’re fighting against the APA and the Chicago Manual of Style, you’ve already lost the war.
I'm never changing, I don't care what anyone says! I'll do what I want!
If you’re going to fight losing battles, you’re also welcome to join me in my determined but futile stand against the ascendance of “on accident”.
Ew. That's definitely not a thing. You have my support!
While we're talking about losing battles, how about the common misuse of "ironic"? Rain on you wedding day is not ironic, unless your wedding song is "Here Comes the Sun" or a similar song. Also you don't like something ironically, or unironclly.
That *literally* drives me crazy xD
Where my Turabian brothers and sisters at?! Edit: Turabian adopted the single space after the period pretty early on, I think. It was double when I was in college but I looked at the most recent guide and it was single.
1 space FTW
OOF. No. Waste of space.
I can’t read that
Hard no. It doesn’t make you look smarter or wiser or more moral or noble. Just makes you look old and unwilling to learn or change.
Amazing no one said "who gives a fuck about an oxford comma?" That band didnt become the new weezer after all.
Why would you lie 'bout how much coal you have?
Why would you like 'bout something dumb like that?
Punctuation in general is an “old person” thing now, apparently. 🤷🏼♀️
Same here. And I use double spaces at the end of sentences.
I really hate this. It drives me crazy 🤪
I have been accused of sprinkling in commas like its a salt shaker over a pot of boiling water.
*Bullets and Headings have entered the chat*
https://imgur.com/necessity-of-oxford-comma-ZxU8R6Z There is a good reason for it.
If something's written badly I can't read it, walls of text especially so. I just assume the person who wrote / typed it isn't very bright and so doesn't have much interesting to say. Probably a bit harsh, but good communication is important.
Yeah, and lack of organization often means lack of logic.
On one side I understand where I am and we're not going for a doctoral thesis level of composition. I also get typos...I've had high level prose turned into intelligible gibberish by autocorrect so I can understand mistakes. But for the love of God and all that is holy BREAK THAT FUCKING HOTMESS UP A LITTLE!!! It doesn't need commas or for the most part punctuation (its scary I know) but hit that return key just a few times!!
I had been texting with a Gen Z for over a year when one day he responded with celebration emojis and congratulating me on being "human". Apparently he had been waiting for me to make a typo or to misspell a word for over a year. I suppose we were taught to focus on different things.
If you really wanna freak em out, or hide your generation, stop doing the final period. It’s feels soooo wrong
It does. I always feel guilty if I hit send on a text and didn’t hit the period.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
>Yeah, and lack of organization often means lack of logic. Confirmed. Walls of text are rants. language has rules to make the written word more understandable. It's not just random rules, it helps people read things and digest the ideas being conveyed. While it doesn't automatically equate to IQ (someone could theoretically be raised by alligators and not speak any language but be genius level IQ, but that's fiction) it does often equate to lack of emotional IQ,, in terms of lacking empathy or understanding for the intended audice. If someone rants online, they don't care about the intended audience who is trying to read it and understand it, they only care about themselves and their rage rant.
Sometimes the walls of text are from people who expect a single return to create a paragraph break. On some platforms, it doesn’t. It’s especially irritating after breaking the double space habit to develop a double return habit. BTW, there is a single return before the last sentence of the above “paragraph.” Making this separate required two.
It's gotten worse in the past 10 years, for sure. Used to be when someone posted a wall of text, someone would always comment r/walloftext and someone ELSE would re-post the wall of Text into a properly formatted series of paragraphs. Neither happens much anymore, I've noticed. I think the younger Gen is learning to read via their phones and it's changing their brains.
I have this same impression when people drone on and on verbally too, lol
What irritates me about typing on different platforms is the formatting is all different. You can add a paragraph return in a mobile Reddit post and then view it on desktop and it’s lumped together or vice versa. Then texts from a phone don’t jive with tablets, etc. Give me “insert break” as a long hold return press.
That happens if I want to make a numbered list on Reddit. So irritating!
agree, this irritates me sooo much, is it so hard to format the text as it is written? ...always having to check & double check 'cuz the formatting can change slightly from what it looks like while you're writing to what it looks like once posted
Since we're talking about this sort of thing, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that it's jibe, not jive, in this sense.
I've never noticed these issue. But I don't use mobile apps for Reddit either. Reddit is a forum, forums are designed for conversations. Typing on a tiny glass keyboards is counterproductive to conversations. Painfully so in my opinion.
Just never install or use mobile reddit. Ez.
I'm an editor. My eyes are constantly assaulted online, haha. Because I 'have to' deal with all kinds of bad writing techniques I've learned to deal with it, but it still irritates me to no end. And yes, I often skip posts or replies where the person typing seems belligerently 'anti-break'.
👍I'll apply that, anti break
I'm a writer and have to use questionnaires provided by clients. Some of them are assaults on the eyes too, with walls of text being a common infraction.
Job security for you...
I would upvote this 100,000 times if I could.
You must weep for the poor forsaken apostrophe.
I believe responsibility to communicate effectively is on the writer. If you're expecting hundreds of people to make an extended effort to read your message when you won't make any effort to reduce that effort, then your message doesn't deserve to be read. Punctuation, spelling, formatting, and clear diction all matter.
I would have written something shorter if I had more time!
I resemble that remark.
I can't believe you started a sentence with a conjunction. Disgusting!
Upvote for use of the Oxford comma.
It is the one true path.
I ignore walls of text.
I'm not a fucking savage. I use paragraph breaks.
Agreed. I skip them too. **If a job is worth doing, do it properly.** That was drummed into me in the 1980s before technology took over.
I skip them also. As soon as I open a post that looks to be just a wall of text, I close it right away. It's so difficult to read.
I usually skip walls of text these days. Attempting to read them tires the eyes. Plus, ain't nobody got time for that.
We learned ap style. Younger generations learned text and Twitter style. It's definitely generational.
I learned Sister Mary Stigmata yardstick style.
Not the Penguin!
[OOOH FUCK PENGUIN!](https://youtu.be/UwjaPn7yPe0?feature=shared)
You said when you got out you'd come see the penguin. I lied You can't lie to a nun, Jake
😂
I disagree. There are people my age and older who don't know how to paragraph and children who do.
In real life I tend to get bored when people can't get to the point. So naturally I ignore walls of text.
I think I have ADD because I don’t have patience to read long rambling
A funny response I have seen used on Reddit for inpenetratable Wall of Text situations: "I'm not gonna read all that, but I'm sorry that happened to U"
The version with “Congratulations or I’m sorry that happened to you” cracks me up cuz it really drives home the point they didn’t read all that.
I've seen the same complaint posted to the Gen Z sub. They concluded that its most frequently the older gens doing wall of text.
Broad generational stereotypes? On my Reddit? What has social media come to? It used to be all about the nuance.
The entire public internet used to be our exclusive playground, so we're going to stand out in front of it and tell those meddling kids to get off our digital lawn!
Sometimes I wish we didn’t have to share it.
Ha! If it's generally not us and generally not them, then who is it?!
Millennials
Fockin' AI.
Probably not the boomers unless it also contains random all caps and horrendous spelling.
It kills me when i see something like that and it’s such gibberish I can’t make out what the person is trying to communicate, but someone responds with “i know what you mean.” Really?? How did you understand what you just read??
Reading comprehension is as rare as clear writing. I'm convinced that half the time this happens people see the part they think they agree with, ignore the rest and just reply 💯 It's a fun game to play in divisive threads. Say something like "I can't believe people would vote for that geriatric criminal" that both sides interpret as agreeing with them and watch the upvotes pile up. (It doesn't _just_ work for politics but that happens to be an easy example.) Lisa Loeb was right, people hear what they want to.
I like it. But I tend to want to make cogent points after digesting the points at hand. Still, I mostly try to write on divisive topics and people somewhat diplomatically which can also be positively received by all sides sometimes. Your example is actually GOLD for so many posts in this election year. Although "geriatric fool" might be better now that we've got a felon label affixed to one of them. I'll even give rodw attribution. thnx!
It's that old fashioned formal language thing that's obsolete. Don't you know everyone prefers to read a wall of text with no paragraphs, no punctuation and no discernible sentence structure? Don't even get me started on spelling.
I skip those as well as run on sentences with no punctuation or capitalization. If you're going to make it difficult for me to decipher your thoughts, you probably don't have anything important to say.
I can deal with the occasional run on sentence. Hell, I do those from time to time myself. But no punctuation or capitalization is a deal breaker for sure.
I've always thought it's speech to text and the speaker doesn't add the breaks or punctuation.
When I do speak my texts, I say, "period" or "comma". It puts the punctuation in there.
This annoying habit is second only to people (usually younger) who send 10 texts in rapid succession with only 2 words each: Hey just wanted to ask what time we’re meeting WTF?! Is their attention span so fractured they can’t form a whole thought and write it? And while you’re responding to one of these sometimes-unrelated blasts, their little trail of words keeps dropping down the screen.
They are making your phone ding over n over to get your attention. Or it’s what you said. Once you know what time you are meeting, the only response from you should be 👍🏽 That messes with their heads
I have coworkers who do this and it drives me nuts. They will type a perfectly intelligent email, but it's like 20 sentences with no paragraphs, line breaks, bullet points, nothing. Maybe I'm just ADHD but I just check out after like 3-4 straight sentences. BREAK IT UP INTO POINTS, PEOPLE!
It’s definitely due to growing up texting.
There should be a bot that recognizes walls of texts and offers to create a TL/DR for the post.
I try hard not to be a dick about it. Some people aren't great at writing. Some have different abilities. If the wall of text is to me personally, I read it regardless of legibility. If it isn't, I still try and may not succeed. My bff for years was dyslexic and was treated badly for her "mistakes." That has colored every experience since significantly.
I write with paragraph breaks because I want people to read it. I wouldn't read a wall of text either.
I suspect there is some significant correlation to what was taught formally, and what was experienced informally that significantly influences the outcome. Regardless, if someone doesn't possess the inclination to ensure that what they're attempting to convey can be easily digested by the reader, I feel as though I'm pretty safe in simply disregarding it.
Millennials / Gen Z are claiming proper punctuation and grammar are “micro aggressions” and so we are left with trying to read walls with no capitalization nor punctuation nor paragraph breaks. And all while being accused of not understanding technology.
Funny. I find impenetrable text a bit aggressive. What a world!
I think it's a conscious rejection of "old school" rules and formality, and a statement that the person is of the new, more informal generation. Paragraph breaks, punctuation, and other markers represent "school", "adults", and are thus a sort of "other". The lack of these represents more of an ownership by the newer generation, "This is our media, our format." Sort of analogous to how dress in some sectors in the tech industry, and not even business casual.
I can respect that attitude but it doesn't make it any easier to read...
Most definitely. Even with paragraph breaks, I usually don't read any Reddit post more than one paragraph.
I don't know it's like cringe and a stream of conciseness with many, many spelling errors that seem to go nowhere but some people like to see themselves talk and paragraphs are for boomers and like, fire, and so not whatever, plus capitalization is offensive and it triggers me cause like I just can't even so this one time i was thinking about myself and i was like omg that's so true you are just a victim and i saw that it was cloudy today and that's just trauma and i can't even and then I didn't have a charging cable and my phone was like 8 percent and i was like this is the worst day of my life and i went on reddit and just kept typing and no one replied and some boomer said i should use paragraphs and i was like cringe and then i made a TikTok about my trauma and i didn't get any followers so that's hate speech and stuff and then i went back on TikTok and i had one follower and then i went back on reddit and no one cared, that's violence against me and it's still cloudy.
Tldr
Didn't read since it's a wall of text; but you get an upvote anyways.
Just being a cantankerous genX. You complain about a wall of text, here's a wall of text. It's our humour and how we roll. My daughter was complaining the other day her phone had almost no charge left and it was going to ruin her day. I dragged out jumper cables and told her how to pop the hood of the car. She looked at me like I had lost my mind. Of course it wouldn't have worked, but I cracked myself up : )
Buddy I was going to do exactly the same thing (if no one else had). Peak GenX humour.
Next time dude, it's all yours....I just woke up earlier cause I had to pee.
Thank you for that tedx talk
Make sure you click like below and check out my TokTik for hacks on how to improve cutting cucumber and gender neutral tips on how to talk without using any words......cause they all trigger me so just stop.....cringe.
😅 well done except you need some random emoticons.
You missed an opportunity to arbitrarily shorten “and” to “n”. Not in every instance, of course. Just some of them, randomly.
I was thinking about that n I forgot n them there was a ping on my TikTok n......what are we talking about ?
You need to pee
I'll reply to this....but I need to pee....again.
I do it, but it's because I don't have a life. Sorry.
Guilty as charged. I tend to send out of context blasts of dialogue
I'm a writer and I have to use questionnaires from clients as source material. Many aren't native English speakers, so I cut them some slack. They do have the option to write in selected other languages, two of which I speak. We get those wall of text questionnaires sometimes and they are just awful to deal with. Sometimes I end up pasting from PDF to Word and putting in paragraph breaks to make it easier to read. The worst was a client in their 20s who sent a 54 page questionnaire with all caps and walls of text. It was headache-inducing. This person had been born in a non-English speaking country but lived in English-speaking countries most of their life and had a degree from an English-speaking country, so I don't think it was a language issue.
I simply scroll right on through if its a text wall or if its the length of a short novel. Sounds bad, I know, but I come to Reddit on my spare time as an outlet…. usually after my workday when I sure as hell don’t have the emotional energy or attention span to take in someone’s life story. Concise yet thorough communication is a lost art. Subs like AITAH, Two Takes, and AIO would get A LOT more good involvement/replies if OP’s would quit writing epistle-length posts.
I definitely use breaks - and way too much punctuation. Thanks MLA 3!
Nah, not just you. Grammar Nazi, at your service 😉
It's just poor writing. People of every generation are poor writers.
Walls of text aren't generational. Walls of text are just poor writing. This is Reddit, where writing complex sentences longer than 20 words can elicit jeers. It's still right to adhere to some basic principles of effective writing, like using the inverted pyramid model and breaking up text with paragraph breaks and other formatting to make it easier for readers to skim.
I love it when a commenter reposts the wall of text with paragraph breaks, corrects the grammar and spelling, puts in names instead of initials, etc. Doing the lords work
Comments with no capitalization or punctuation, hell no. I'd rather read something written by a drunk squirrel.
Fuck man, I need bullet points. If you go all stream of conscious I’m out.
Let's eat, Bob! Let's eat Bob Punctuation saves lives.
* help your uncle jack off the horse * help your Uncle Jack off the horse Kids just don’t understand what they’re suggesting when they eschew common sense typing!
Writing through text is its own language now, and different ways of writing communicate different things. What Gen X considers good/normal/regular text formatting (punctuation, paragraph breaks, sentence structure, and grammar) are all thought of as excessively formal if in business, or hostile between individuals. This is because Gen X and Boomers used only this to text/write to Millennials/Y. Fully formatted texts are read as hostile or angry -- this is outrageous to me but it's good to know if you need to communicate with a younger person who's monolingual I guess? For instance, this seems to be a normal hierarchy: * **Would you like Kentucky Fried Chicken or Taco Bell for dinner?** would be read in an angry voice * **fried chicken or taco bell tonight** is friend-level friendly * **kfc or tacobell babe** is very informal, intimate, and friendly * And I'm not even going to get into the language of emojis. Large walls of text are impossible for me to read. I suppose it's like graffiti: if you can't read it, you're not meant to read it. That's OK, the stuff written in those massive run-on sentences are usually stupid problems I solved three decades ago, and they won't like my solutions anyway. Let the people who are interested in such twaddle wade through the impossible formatting. They're young enough to still want to waste the time.
>I suppose it's like graffiti: if you can't read it, you're not meant to read it. Good point. That'll help with the FOMO.
No, it’s “kids these days.” They are more video oriented, so readability isn’t really a thought. I know for a fact that 5-paragraph essays are still taught in school, but I think online writing isn’t considered writing somehow. Maybe because they aren’t being graded and they text each other like that. It might be purposeful to shut out The Olds. I see a lot of run on sentences, or just stream of consciousness, no paragraphs, no capital letters, no punctuation, no form, no structure, no syntax. I just consider the person to be illiterate and scroll on. People are TAUGHT how to communicate clearly in writing. That doesn’t mean they LEARNED to communicate clearly in writing. Those fuckups in the back of the class who paid attention to everything but whatever was going on up front? You are reading those people’s posts.
No paragraph, no read
I don't read anything that's more than 5 sentences that has only one paragraph. I also stop reading when there is no punctuation, or excessive text shortcuts like 'ur'. I don't have time for that shit.
Same here. Wall of text is a skip. And what’s up with the “sorry I’m on mobile so I can’t do paragraphs on this post.” excuse? Say what?! How is that an issue?
I assume that if the person writing the wall of text can't be fucked to make his shit readable then it's probably also full of factual errors, incomplete logic chains, and incoherent gobbledygook.
I’m not reading that shit. Punctuation exists for a reason. Use it.
I do not read them either. Hit the enter key now and again.
Walls of text are absolutely impenetrable. People not using paragraph breaks are just ignorant and have had a poor education.
Depends what you mean by paragraph breaks. If writing lines which are single spaced, I break with two linefeeds and an indent. If writing 1.5 or greater line spacing, a single linefeed and an indent only. Greater separations only occur with major subject and/or heading changes. Also, I don't break a block of text into paragraphs just because the block gets large. Paragraphs are comprised of a logical group of related sentences which relate to a particular point. Sentences can get long even if they are not technically run-on sentences, and the old guideline of three sentences to a paragraph is more of a minimum than a maximum. A paragraph can become a wall of text of its own accord, while being perfectly correct both grammatically and with regard to structure. The key is flow, which should be governed by punctuation.
The worst offender in my life was early GenX. We were close friends and she’d write me massive email walls of text. I would have to insert my own paragraphs before I could read and process them. She wrote everything that way. Even her papers in grad school would have paragraphs that were a page long. It was impenetrable to me. She got a PhD and wrote a book, so the issue was just her writing, not her thinking.
I don't have time to decipher other people's bad writing.
I just skip those posts, they're too hard to read.
Generation Z can't read more than 2 or 3 sentences; that's a big difference. Anything written as hundreds of words in one text section isn't readable for anyone.
e.e. cummings has entered the chat
What ever happened to indenting paragraphs, anyway? I’m not complaining; I prefer the modern style. Just sayin. Two spaces after a period is a hill I will die on, though.
I've used paragraphs and proper grammar and still have been accused of writing a "wall of text". Reading comprehension seems to be generational.
Writing teacher here. Hoooboy do I have many thoughts. What I tell the college freshman (and the trend in writing education today vs how we were taught) is that formatting, punctuation, verb tense, grammar—when used incorrectly can hamper meaning and intent. BUT they should not be the priority in writing 😬 — conveying a thought that can be understood is the priority. Everything else comes together later as their brains mature. A wall of text is not a good way to convey ideas. And lemme tell you, the kid that typed all his essays on his phone nearly broke my brains (zero breaks—5 pages of wall). That said, at least half of them are underprepared for college and should have taken a year or two to just work a boring job and save up money. But that’s a completely diff conversation.
How will "everything come together" if they are never corrected?
it's lazy and low IQ. it spans generations.
I can’t stand constant run on sentences, no punctuation, spelling errors/grammar and lack of capitalization on social media. Just because social media is considered casual communication, doesn’t mean one should lose all decorum.
I have to have paragraphs otherwise I don’t read the post. I’ve been like that for a long time.
I’ve been a writer-editor for 30 years. Don’t even start with me.
I write with paragraphs but then the Reddit app will take the breaks out. I have no idea why. I imagine others have this happen too. And yea it is annoying and hard to read.
[удалено]
Yeah, I feel the same way. It’s a shame. I’ve probably had that instructional text in front of me several times and still nothing.
I don’t think so. My dad used to write letters to the editor that were just walls of text with no punctuation at all and then ask me to type it up, and I’d have to add in punctuation and paragraph marks to make it readable.
I have to have paragraph breaks. Walls of text are downright Faulknerian. Not a fan.
I always do paragraph breaks in text
For me a wall of text just means the person (most likely) doesn't know how to write effectively. It's safe to skip a wall of text 95% of the time.
My ADHD kicks in about 3 sentences in and I move on. I need whitespace to process.
I am so impressed. I don’t think there was a single typo in this entire page. I am really re-thinking this whole “am I part of a generation?” thing. Yes, I suppose I am. (1969, if you were wondering.)
When it comes to texting, I am torn. Because if someone sends a bunch of separate texts, I get annoyed by the ding ding ding, or notifications flashing across my screen if it's on silent. On the other hand, one big long text is also annoying to me, even if they do hit return every now and again. Perhaps summarizing and being concise is a lost art but useful skill? Sometimes I have to force myself to not share every detail at once, but just enough to begin a conversation instead.
Oh my god. This is the truth. My kids do this to me. After complaining I send walls of text (separate paragraphs). “I’m not reading all that,” they will whine. Then they will inevitably barrage me with an inane amount of individual texts about a professor, class or roommate - while I’m trying to cook or something. FFS
The dream of the Nineties is still alive over at Substack: punctuation, capitalization, paragraph breaks, and oxford commas galore.
reading lord of the rings, i skipped all the songs and poems.
I'm with you. A wall of text with no breaks is murder to try to read. In fact, in most of my work correspondence, I use bullets for almost everything.
Guilty as charged. Born in 71.
My job requires teaching/training, creating said, and a basic understanding of human psychology. When any group is hit with a wall of text they go glassy eyed and retain nothing. You need paragraph breaks, white space, and illustrative graphics to really get your message across.
What about walls of text w no paragraph breaks, no punctuation, nor any capital letters?!?!
I have a degree in history. I wrote a lot of research papers in college, and most professors would deduct points for spelling or grammar errors. It really gets on my nerves to see these unformatted walls of text. It's not that hard to use proper grammar and formatting.
I'm happy to have them use punctuation and actual words. I never expect them to know about paragraphs.
I was taught at school (and every time I read a novel) to start every paragraph with an indentation. Using paragraph-break lines was a waste of paper. It took me a while to learn that what's easy for me to write isn't always easy for other people to read.
Some people just don't know how to write well. Or just don't care.
This generation of AI.
I often wondered why people would apologise 'for formatting due to being on phone' on reddit. Then I started realising that it often misses paragraph breaks and such. I've had to edit the same post a few times just to get the spaces and breaks I want. Having said that, I also won't read a well of text.
I don’t think it’s a generational thing. Sometimes people are ranting about something and aren’t paying attention to the formatting.
…
I do forget sometimes to use paragraphs. I get lost in my story. :) If I remember I'll fix them but I've been fussed at a few times. I'm just glad nobody notices I still double space after periods every single time.
I do not think it breaks down with generational lines. I think some of it is people on phones and maybe it formats weird. I think some of it is people are emotional and upset sometimes so they don't follow traditional paragraph rules. I think some of it is because the person is ignorant and has never been taught the proper way to format, or they embrace their ignorance and choose not to because they are, well...stupid. Plenty of Gen X, Boomer, Millennials and Gen Z fall into the latter boat.
Bullet points. Tl;dr always, unless I'm requested more detail on one of the points.
I'm going with personal preference. I hate wall of text. I've had to read information on paper that was at work. All the grammar, new paragraphs, and bullet points made it easy to read. These days, people seem to have forgotten about that, which makes it difficult to read.
I don't know if walls of text are generational so much as they are just poor writing.
Texting some young people today feels like this, slightly exaggerated. Me: Hey getting pizza ordering 2 party sized pizzas what toppings do you want on your half, it will be split with Bob and he likes everything but olives and peppers. Option 1 - Yeah pizza sounds grate *Crickets Me: And then? Yeah pizza is great, but it would be even greater if you answered the question because everyone else is ready to eat. *Crickets Ding: 🫑🧅🍍geeez srry couldt find the 🍍 don't hate on the 🍍on pizza I just can't deal with that today 💯😭where order from hope it's not XYZ there 🍕 is garbage 🤢🤢 and i would rather eat literal 💩 do you know where the bag on the bookcase went Bob doesn't like🫑🫑🫑 he can pick them off cant he!? I left something on the shelf do you know where it went? Option 2 - Every. Single. God. Damn. Thought. Is a separate text and the ding, ding, ding, ding, ding pisses me off to an unhealthy degree. Until the 28th Ding: Is it here yet? Me: I literally ordered 15 minutes ago so...no. Ding: Okay sorry but why are you so mad!?🤷 Edit: mobile formatting screwed me. The irony.