Bad Etiquette. . .

It’s rightly said to be bad etiquette to type on the Internet with ALL CAPS. Not only is to do so ungrammatical, it is an unsightly thing to do. Who wants to read that? Maybe the message has gotten out. In my own experience, I don’t see it often these day.

Now I’m well aware that my own experience rounds to 0% of the Internet experience, but I can still talk about it. It’s an experience, at the very least, that means something to me. Only others can judge if my encounters parallels theirs.

There actually may be something worse than typing in ALL CAPS. That’s having lots and lots of sentences crammed into a single paragraph. Talk about a reader’s nightmare! Heck, I think I could stand reading an ALL CAPS message, as long as it was nicely broken into smaller paragraphs.

In my own small online corner, I observe a greater number of people engaging in this example of bad etiquette. They write a wall of text. It has no breaks, no breathers. It’s just one sentence after another. It’s frankly a horrible sight.

People could learn a lot by reading a good newspaper column. The writer often will have an entire paragraph be only a single sentence. The thing is, it totally works! Things flow in readability with the breaks between paragraphs. Imagine if the column’s paragraphs decreased in number. Rather than making it a better read, it would become far worse.

Want a good example? Dr. Thomas Sowell! Read his shorter essays… Concise. Flawless word choices. Paragraph size is perfect. Educational. And packed with info!