I really dislike this popular writing style in SEO-oriented sites
I don't know who started it, although I have some clues. In the last couple of years, I've been seeing a lot of articles following this specific format.
You know what I mean.
Yes, entire articles that are just long sequences of one-liners.
And you know what?
They're really hard to read, so it makes me wonder...
Who enjoys that?
Is it just me who is thoroughly annoyed?
What's the reason they do this?
Do you think it works in practice, or is it just a way to beat some algorithm by artificially inflating some dark pattern metrics?
It used to be that people wrote long paragraphs without a break, which reads like an incoherent rant.
But this opposite extreme is just as bad, and it makes your article read like a ransom note.
So please stop.
The pairing of 'runs locally' + 'no API keys' is undervalued positioning. It speaks to the technical buyer who has already been burned by SaaS tools that changed pricing, added rate limits, or went down at the wrong moment.
The one-time purchase model makes sense when the tool does a defined job well. What's the job this tool does?
Writing needs to have a rhythm and while some short sentences definitely help with reading, they need to be paired with longer sentences to help build that rhythm.
Like if you want to make a point it's better to use a shorter sentence then the next couple of sentences can be longer and elaborate on the shorter point. I think the old myth that our attention spans are terrible have contributed to the overuse of single lines of text. (On that note if our attention spans were so terrible then why are we still reading novels and watching 10 episodes of our favourite shows back-to-back?)
That long sequence of one-liners you did is indeed brutal to read.
However, it does work in practice. Not with pure one-liners tho. It would be absurd. The idea is to organize the thoughts to be easily digestible to the reader. This also means properly organizing your paragraphs.
This is a practice I've seen began in email marketing sequences.
It (somewhat) makes sense because it would be hard for the reader's eyes to move from left to right in the world of ever-largening screens in a typical email format. But websites today, like this one, can now be properly adjusted to address this problem.
When you thought it's solvable, there's Twitter...
Twitter boxed every writer's thoughts to be expressed in tweets of 280 characters. Microbloggers turned tweets into threads, and Twitter reaffirmed the idea into a feature. Now, the buttons after each tweet on a Twitter thread are now queues to pause the readers to digest. And then... there's Tiktok. 😬
Anyway, all of this can also be blamed and is contributing to our shortening attention span.
Yes, it's possible that Twitter has a share of blame on this. But I'm not exaggerating about the one-liner format. There's a prominent SEO thought leader who writes like this all-the-time, and whether he got to that style intentionally, or he borrowed from someone else, I've seen it pop up everywhere in recent years.
That example is extreme, but I do this myself to a degree, but more like @kerry_camp describes. It's a personal style and (personally) I prefer it (obviously), and done correctly, it can help not hinder the flow and help to make important points without bold or underlines etc. It probably also encouarage's scrolling - so blame mobile phones.
The other extreme is large paragraphs without spacing, which definitely can be hard to read on a screen.
So, it's about balance really.
See what I did there?
Yes, balance is the key, and when sprinkled in, those short one-liners are effective. The problem is when the entire article/post/email is like that. It gets tiring really quickly, and it makes it hard to follow any argument. It's someone imposing the Twitter thread format into their long form. Really horrible to read.
I hear you.
It kinda drives me crazy, actually, so thanks for bringing it up!
Kerry_Campion put it well when they said about using a mix of sentence lengths to build a rhythm.
And yes, I know the argument is that people have short attention spans--I don't buy it! Using short sentences does not equal engaging writing. I always say to write how you talk (or use your brand voice) -- and who talks like that?!
Let's just take a minute and think...
Do we know anyone...
Who talks like that?
In the end, a series of very long sentences or a series of very short sentences without variety will cause reader fatigue. And as for the attention span argument, just go look at Oatly's copy style. Long sentences, loooong copy, yet engaging... here, I think I found their longest sentence! https://www.oatly.com/en-gb/oatly-who#back-in-the-days