Do not kill the paragraph
Writing single liners is a great strategy for gaining masses of following through fortune cookie thoughts and empty platitudes. However, sometimes you have to dive deeper into a topic.
Inviting people alongside you for the journey to untangle the windy roads of your thought process, to sprinkle it with ingenuity and nuance works wonders. Your personal perspective makes a topic interesting. I’m not suggesting to stuff your content with words. The point is to acknowledge that not everyone just scans, not everyone just needs a dopamine fix, and not everyone wants to boost their ego. We’re here also to learn, and we learn online through writing and reading solid work.
Writing an article that looks like it’s a list without punctuation because someone on the internet said “people don’t read, they just scan” is how we lose our grip with nuance. Everyone just chases the finale, while we discard the process, the why, the how of getting there. We all like to think we are “deep thinkers” or “philosophers.” By using simplistic one-liners to express your understanding of a topic we’re limiting our thought process, asking our readers to trust us with our conclusions. Where’s the nuance, the process, the thought? Gone.
Don’t “kill the paragraph.” Let the writing flow and then use the editing process to shape it into a coherent and concise thought. Fill it with nuance and insight that only you can deliver, without punctuating it with one-liners, so your audience could follow along.