I Don’t Know When People Decided That Scribbling 15 Mediocre One-Liners Is Good Writing

And no, I’m not talking about on Medium.

As contemporary styles of writing change, so too does the use of the one-sentence paragraph. If you were to explore a bit of Mary Shelley’s work from the 1800s — specifically Frankenstein — you’d find entire pages taken up by a single sentence.

In modern writing, the one-liner paragraph has taken on a new usage — that of emphasis. Writers who wish to underscore a particular theme or point dangle these one-liners masterfully before readers, drawing them in subtly but completely, gently but fully.

It’s like quieting to a whisper … forcing your audience to come in closer.

Check out the writings of Sean Kernan and Jeanne Yacoubou, MS, two popular Medium writers, to see some top-notch examples. To use this technique properly, you must interweave your chosen line between a collection of longer paragraphs and detailed sentences. This ensures that your one-liner stands out and achieves the intended effect. Many Medium writers in particular have mastered this technique.

And then you have LinkedIn.

I already take issue with people using LinkedIn as a dumping ground for whatever uninformed and generic life advice the universe bestowed upon them on any given day. At the very least, if your post has no real substance, you should gild it with eloquent writing and proper structure.

But instead, the modern collection of unqualified self-help gurus and egotistical influencers have adopted a new structure in the pursuit of tomfoolery: a dragged-out paragraph where every individual sentence receives its own line.

The following is an example of the type of post you might see on LinkedIn. It’s of my own making. I decided not to copy an actual post because my purpose isn’t to expose individual members of LinkedIn; I just want to draw general attention to the fact that writing quality as a whole on the platform is in decline.

“Sometimes, things just don’t go your way.

And that’s okay.

I spoke to 7 different candidates for a position last week, and at the end of the day, only one got the job.

But that doesn’t mean the others weren’t good enough.

We just needed the best fit for our company, and it’s not just about talent.

The other candidates will excel somewhere where they fit.

So don’t think you did something wrong if you get rejected.

It’s not always about skill.

It’s about fit.”

If you’re used to reading the high-quality writing on Medium, I am truly sorry for what I just put you through. Imagine how I felt writing it.

Jokes aside, what I’ve written above is hardly an exaggeration — both topically and structurally. It’s fairly representative of what you might find on LinkedIn. It has a number of issues, perhaps most notably the lack of one coherent message. However — as you’ve likely guessed by now — I am most frustrated by the ridiculous formatting.

Though most writing advice focuses on the words themselves, format also matters. There is a reason children are restricted to a five paragraph structure when they first learn essay writing. Good structure builds a foundation for good writing — your writing cannot flourish without it. Even the best seeds simply won’t grow in bad soil.

In the above example, the reader must expend repeated effort moving from line to line and thus is unable to coherently follow and digest the post. Even if there was a point, the reader would struggle to comprehend it.

Some LinkedIn influencers have even advocated for posts like the above, applauding the apparent simplicity. But that’s just the thing — simple is not always better, and pretending that this structure somehow contributes to ease of reading is nonsense.

It might seem minor, but it speaks to the larger issue of writing’s downfall. More and more people seem to harbor the sentiment that good writing is overrated, and that one can get by with less-than-average communication skills. If the most prominent career-oriented social platform can’t even appreciate good writing, what’s to be said about smaller spaces, or even communities within companies themselves?

Put simply, being able to write is one of the most valuable, marketable skills a person can have, and it’s time we gave it a little more respect. If we don’t, we might soon find ourselves struggling to communicate effectively at all — and that’s not a future I’d like to think about.