peristaltor: (Default)
peristaltor ([personal profile] peristaltor) wrote2012-04-25 07:12 pm

Perry's Index of Emotional Trainwreckery as Measured by Typesetting

Over the years on the intertubes, I've noticed when people get especially passionate about a topic they tend to forget that the common way to make words legible online is to include double page-breaks instead of the traditional single page-break and indented paragraphs. Online, I don't know why, reading an especially long paragraph makes it look like a page from ancient Greek text.

Which is, kinda, exactly the opposite of what the poster intends the reply to be, isn't it? Isn't the object of a long rant to convince the reader of their error?

So, wouldn't going on and on in a monolithic block of ranty text be a sign that the intention of the post has divorced itself from the post itself long ago, taken the children and pinned a note on the lawn?

Based on that, allow me to propose Perry's Index of Emotional Trainwreckery as Measured by Typesetting. It's a one-to-ten scale of readability based only on a lack of page breaks and other pagination. The longer the block, the closer to 10 (and a visit from the kind people in white coats) the commenter might just be.

What ya think?