One sentence per line

By on 2023-05-18

In text-based formats like Markdown, AsciiDoc or Org, write one sentence per line.

Doing so has many advantages. When writing, having each sentence on a single line allows for easily swapping lines around, or splitting and joining paragraphs. While editing, a line per sentence makes it easy to spot repetition and keep track of line lengths. While publishing—to HTML, for example—the line feeds are automatically taken out to produce readable paragraphs.1

As an example, this is the previous paragraph on one line: 

Doing so has many advantages. When writing, having each sentence on a single line allows for easily swapping lines around, or splitting and joining paragraphs. While editing, a line per sentence makes it easy to spot repetition and keep track of line lengths. While publishing---to HTML, for example---the line feeds are automatically taken out to produce readable paragraphs.

Now, you wouldn’t write a full paragraph on one line without enabling line wrap, so here’s the same paragraph with wrapped lines: 

Doing so has many advantages.
When writing, having each sentence on a single line allows for easily
swapping lines around, or splitting and joining paragraphs. While
editing, a line per sentence makes it easy to spot repetition and keep
track of line lengths. While publishing---to HTML, for example---the
line feeds are automatically taken out to produce readable paragraphs.

The same example with one sentence per line doesn’t require line wrapping:2 

Doing so has many advantages.
When writing, having each sentence on a single line allows for easily swapping lines around, or splitting and joining paragraphs.
While editing, a line per sentence makes it easy to spot repetition and keep track of line lengths.
While publishing---to HTML, for example---the line feeds are automatically taken out to produce readable paragraphs.

However, it works even with wrapped lines: 

Doing so has many advantages.
When writing, having each sentence on a single line allows for
easily swapping lines around, or splitting and joining paragraphs.
While editing, a line per sentence makes it easy to spot repetition
and keep track of line lengths.
While publishing---to HTML, for example---the line feeds are
automatically taken out to produce readable paragraphs.
  1. https://asciidoctor.org/docs/asciidoc-recommended-practices/#one-sentence-per-line ↩︎

  2. In fact, I don’t use line wrapping in my editor, and see lines that require vertical scrolling as an indication my lines are too long.

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