walls o' text

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I don't usually need a lot of revision these days, when I'm on form. My thoughts usually come in an ordered, cogent form....I just put them into words as they occur to me, run it past my critical faculty as I type. Occasionally I'll check that I've got the meanings of words right, sometimes I'll take a look at what the Web has to say about the subject, and post the links if it looks useful. If I've got time, I'll usually read through what I've got when I'm done typing, sometimes I post it unaltered, sometimes I'll spot a way of shortening something, or a better analogy, and sometimes I'll decide I didn't really have anything to say, and I'll close the page without posting. If the material seems thorny - e.g. religion - I tend to check more carefully for statements liable to cause a breach of the peace.

It feels easy, and more of a relaxation than a wind-up. I get enough replies to make me feel confident that some of it interests a few people and stimulates their thinking on the subject.

Really, output isn't my problem. I find input more difficult.

No they don't. Each word is painful and difficult. I type faster than I think. Even on my iPod like now. My longer posts take me hours, sometimes days, except on rare occasions. The problem is that I am literally unable to change the size of any post appreciably. Short posts come out short. Long posts come out long. My biggest problem is that I cannot summarize. I literally can't. Any effort to do so causes even more pain, frustration, and meltdown eventually. It takes too much abstraction, I think. I can't choose which details to keep in and which to leave out. Just can't. So I leave them all in or else I can't write anything at all. I am like an Ent, a Tolkien creation who are not native to language and who thus use a story where anyone else would use a word. It's not voluntary at all I feel terrible because I myself have trouble reading walls of text including my own due to serious receptive language issues. Walls of text are not considered good writing so this is something I really struggle with. But I can't make a short post long either although it's easier than making a long post short. Have been flamed for this, accused of doing it on purpose, when I asked for help was treated like a spoiled brat, made me feel horrible and drive myself to meltdown for days trying and trying to shorten. The best I can do is bold the most important parts but can't even always do that. The words I write often also come out wrong and need adjusting and deleting. I write in word strings not words and often get the wrong string.

I don't know if it's something I admire.. if the topic's interesting, sometimes I'll read it, but most of the time I get the 'tl:dr' feeling (there are a few exceptions- there are a couple of people whose posts I always at least skim over if I come across them, and another whose thought process is so weird it's kind of fascinating.)

I'm guilty of doing it myself- I tend to break peoples' posts into smaller chunks and try to answer the question as carefully as possible. Wrongplanet is full of pedants, so what would be a single-sentence reply in real life, becomes three paragraphs of caveats.

I'll press 'submit' thinking I've just made a brief reply and the post will take up half the page..

It comes out harshly even with your explanation. Why? Because even with what wavefreak said about it being a language problem you still can't imagine it being anything other than a choice. For me it is not a choice and you would not believe how much agony I get from people who treat it like it is.

I don't mind that you can't read walls of text. Neither can I much of the time so I either only read bits or skip them. I mind that you think they're written because of a preference. It is not a choice for a lot of us. If it were I would rarely write them. Do you think I don't know or care people have trouble reading them after years of snide or snarky remarks, getting flamed, getting accused of being lazy or worse deliberately writing in a difficult manner?! After days worth of meltdowns leaving me useless to take care of myself because I cared so much that I tried really hard and still couldn't summarize (I.e. write abstractly)?! Seriously.

And after all that I asked if anyone could help me make my text more accessible to this one woman, she was like "Oh come off it. You could do it yourself if you wanted. Unlike your home you don't have servants here." As if the people who keep me alive due to severe daily living issues, and who have way more power over me than I have over them, are just optional servants of rich people rather than people who help someone who is severely impaired and quite poor. That gave me a phobia of even writing for awhile.

Oh and I'm not a pedant. I just struggle with the abstraction required to summarize a long piece of writing if it happens to come out that way. It's a language/cognitive problem, not the love of language pedants seem to have. I hate language and often thus clash with real pedants. I really hate the assumptions so many people have about why people write long posts, as if we just enjoy it, prefer it, or can't be bothered to do otherwise. No.

I don't hate language, but I'm not a fan of engaging in genuine pedantry. I do it deliberately for humor sometimes, and I think I do it without intending to a lot of the time. At least I managed to cut out my grammar/spelling pedantry a long time ago after I caused a needless fight with a friend by doing so.

Yeah. I find grammar/spelling pedantry offensive and elitist most of the time, although if it's from OCD I can understand (but the very idea of standardized grammar/spelling the person's OCD latched onto is still pretty offensive and elitist). Also some people have trouble reading nonstandard, but they likely wouldn't have if they had grown up in a culture that wasn't organized with the dominant people's way of doing things being considered the only right way.

On a first pass, yes. The basic outline pops up ready to go and kind-of fills itself in as I type - it just flows out without having to actively construct it and in most cases I can't actively construct it, because to try and do so just shatters the whole thing. It has to be written exactly as it arrives at my fingertips.

Usually I need no further referencing - I have enough lined up and ready to go to write it down as-is although while typing, a web link might pop up as being relevant (a 'side-thought') so I'll dig it out to confirm its relevance and paste the link too if it's as I thought, and it usually is.

But I almost always drop into 'revision mode', where I prod things around and rephrase a bit here, delete a bit there.
This is where things start going wrong as I get mired down in fiddly details, and sometimes after spending 30 minutes writing something and fiddling with it, I'd throw it away in frustration. I'm happy enough with the content but some aspect of the structure is annoying and because of that, it's dumped. But really, if I'd only left it alone I probably wouldn't have broken it.
I try to keep things short here but it doesn't always work out and the posted result is often the mangled remains of a frustrated 'Oh FFS, leave it alone and post the damned thing!' decision.
I really need to learn how to just let it flow and be done with it.

But when I'm writing an email to a friend I go on for pages. No holds barred and it's not so much a mail, more a novel.

That at me? Nah, I wasn't accusing you of pedantry- I was explaining why I resort to writing long paragraphs. If I wrote a short sentence and didn't include all the exceptions to what I wrote, someone here would rip it to bits. Hence in trying to avoid them, I become a pedant myself.

I dunno... I rely on stream of consciousness to do most of my writing. So most of the time it comes out jumbled and then I do my best to edit it after the fact. Sometimes that makes the post not make much sense, but oh well.

Maybe both. I have a verbal internal dialogue but other than that I would say I'm a visual thinker. As far as a special interest I could spurt out the odd fact or two but if I'm posting I'm going to rely on a link because I can't explain what I want to talk about as well as a good link. My thoughts are definitely disordered, like small balls rolling around in a box.


My reading comprehension is well below my reading speed. I try to slow down but then my mind wanders. When I'm reading a lot of new information I get overloaded and it's like I forget what I read as soon as I read it. I can handle novels better than non-fiction because I can hold a picture in my head of what the characters are doing and it's easier for me back to.


Also, I totally get what you mean about the language of art, poetry and music being a separate language. Trying to translate that into verbal language just sucks the juice right out of it IMO.

I type what think, and I just use the key board. It's never perfect enough for me either. Often times I repeat and spell something wrong. If I type even short things, I find myself missuseing the 'preview' option, and editing my posts over 5 times.

I'm pretty annoying like that, aren't I? I don't know how some people manage to spell everything really well, and type so neatly on the first try either. It's beyond me.

Yes I have this issue as well and sometimes people still don't interpret it the way I had it interpreted in my head.

I used to say what comes to my head and I said lot of dumb things. Now I am more careful now.


BTW, I hate walls of text. It's so hard to read. I usually skip them when I run into them. If they are broken up into paragraphs, then I can read it.

Last edited by League_Girl on 15 Feb 2011, 4:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Edit: I think I misunderstood the poster.

Last edited by Verdandi on 15 Feb 2011, 4:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm also amazed at the walls of text that I see. I have a hard enough time typing a paragraph, most of the time.

Having complete thoughts separated visually from others help me with comprehension too, LeagueGirl.