Resting in Pieces

When I went to school, the process of learning how to write progressed along these lines: learn how to write the letters; learn how to write words; learn how to put the words together to form sentences; and finally, learn how to create paragraphs out of the sentences. It worked, in a way, much like the growth of a tree: first, the seed is planted; then the seedling sprouts from the soil; then the branches feel their way outward from the trunk; and last comes the foliage bringing it together in a beautiful whole. Sadly, these days it seems that the tree has no leaves; the paragraph is dead.

Whether in print or on the internet, the providers of our daily news prefer to dole it out in crumbs, writing single (often simple) sentences, one after the other, almost as if leading a trail to …well, to nowhere (but that’s a separate issue). Anyway, once in a while, they may daringly decide to string two sentences together into something that almost resembles a paragraph. Even less frequently, (be still my heart) they allow three sentences to share the same space, making a true paragraph – or so it would seem.

All too often, the second or third sentence, the sentence that gives the word cluster a paragraphic look, doesn’t actually follow the sentence(s) to which it is joined. Conversely, the single sentences that are busy dancing with themselves could very easily have been combined to form full-fledged paragraphs. For example, let’s look at this example from the Putzville Gazette:

Mayor Charlie Dingleheimer lost his bid for reelection to his fourth term last
night, being defeated by Mrs. Irma Flocker.

Mrs. Flocker received 80 of the 120 votes cast in what is thought to be the biggest landslide in the history of Putzville.
When told of her victory, Mrs. Flocker said, “Oh dear Lord, I only did it as a lark, I didn’t expect to be elected.” The death of her husband, Homer, is still fresh on her mind.
Said Mrs. Flocker, “If only Homer hadn’t eaten those mushrooms – I told him not to, you know.”

OK, I made that story up. The format, however, I copied from a story published by a major news outlet (I can’t say which one, other than to note that it has something to do with a TV Network and a software monopoly). In any case, would it really have been all that difficult to write the story is paragraph form? Would it have killed anyone? What would have been so hard about writing:

Mayor Charlie Dingleheimer lost his bid for reelection to his fourth term last night, being defeated by Mrs. Irma Flocker, who received 80 of the 120 votes cast in what is thought to be the biggest landslide in the history of Putzville. When told of her victory, Mrs. Flocker said, “Oh dear Lord, I only did it as a lark, I didn’t expect to be elected.”
Noting the recent death of her husband, Homer, Mrs. Flocker said, “If only Homer hadn’t eaten those mushrooms – I told him not to, you know.”

Rest in Pieces, O Great Paragraph, and lie beneath a tree bereft of leaves.