> I'm personally not a fan of the author's writing style.
Agreed. The paragraphs are too short and are not as freestanding as they should be. For instance the following should have been folded into the preceding paragraph, which provided the vital context:
> But that’s often the cause of the failure.
I also find it jarring to read a sentence beginning with and or but, although not everyone agrees with me that it's poor style.
There is a specific case where you start a sentence with 'but': when you want to give someone time to accept the previous statement before demolishing it. This is what we all know, and we all agree that we see it. But what we know is not right, and here's why.
If a person is using And and But equally, they just like the mental pause between their statements. The period is more of an ellipsis. If your reader needs a mental pause before an And, before a second piece of information, maybe your information is too dense and you should free the new information to stand alone. Possibly in a new paragraph.
As in, "The other thing that's cool about this process is that it also does blah. Which is useful for these reasons..."
I don't know how other people develop a theory of a system, but if you want to change mine, if I want to change mine, I have to 'walk into it' see what's wrong with it, deconstruct it and put it back together the new way. If you don't bring me through this, I'm going to make you stop talking, back up, and walk me through it anyway. Otherwise your next best outcome is that later than night when I'm brushing my teeth I realize you're right and we pick it back up tomorrow. If it's in writing, I can only make you back up by skipping back a few paragraphs, or writing a response that you may or may see. If your proposal is too woo, I'll just be writing you off entirely.
I find myself beginning sentences with conjunctions. I try to edit it out most of the time, but I'm not fanatical about it. I think it reads more clearly to the original writer than it does to a reader.
You're absolutely correct about the paragraphs. A paragraph is a tool for organizing your document. If you have only one sentence per paragraph, you're sacrificing that tool. You already have the period to separate sentences, so you should use paragraph separators to group sentences into a coherent thought.
The rule of thumb is 3-5 sentences per paragraph. It's not ironclad, but if you find yourself breaking it often, you're probably doing something wrong.
Agreed. The paragraphs are too short and are not as freestanding as they should be. For instance the following should have been folded into the preceding paragraph, which provided the vital context:
> But that’s often the cause of the failure.
I also find it jarring to read a sentence beginning with and or but, although not everyone agrees with me that it's poor style.