Finding Meaning in Paragraph Breaks
I started thinking about this during a week in which I was writing tens of half-finished blog posts. I began to think about paragraph usage, reminded of philosophical style guides I had been encouraged to read by philosophy professors in college, and recalling my interest in semantics when I was starting to get interested in Philosophy of Language.
Paragraph breaks are part of language, and are used to imply what an author believes are distinct abstract categories. New chapters, new sections, and intermediary breaks within sections can also imply serve a similar purpose, the difference being that they imply different abstract levels of conceptual distinctions. Sentences and in-sentence punctuation can imply more fine-tuned conceptual distinctions. Individual words, or perhaps word roots, are around the smallest bits of syntax which still have some conceptual meaning to them.
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Words are mostly used to evoke basic concepts that we use as the building-blocks for larger ideas. While the syntactic rules connecting individual words is pretty intuitive, when we go on to distinguish between more complexly constructed ideas, the syntactic rules too become more abstract. For example, where you choose to make paragraph breaks—or which ideas get split between which books—is more of an art than a science.
Where we put these breaks conveys some meaning. The sort of meaning we read and write into these conceptual breaks comes from the fact that our writing is an attempt to coordinate our thoughts with others—to bring to mind ideas in others’ heads which have an expected practical effect. Our need to coordinate seems to imply some basic things about how we use section breaks. For example, we might extend our way of thinking about how ‘spaces between words imply a distinction between different-but-interacting concepts’—extending this pattern to infer that paragraph breaks, section breaks, chapter breaks, etc. indicate similar ‘distinctions between related concepts’, but at a more abstract level. These abstract concepts, such as those constructed by the interaction of words and sentences within individual paragraphs, are not as common as the concepts brought to mind by words. If these paragraphs invoked common concepts, then there would already be a word for the feeling they’re invoking, and we wouldn’t have to devote a whole paragraph to evoking it. A piece of writing, if successful, will be able to bring forth in the reader’s mind these complex, uncommon concepts and feelings. [1]
Writing constructs a conceptual structure, and the abstract section breaks help indicate to the reader where the new abstract concepts begin and end. The abstract idea of one paragraph should be able to interact with the abstract idea of other paragraphs in the same section—similar to how words within the same sentence can interact and build on each other, or how sentences within the same paragraph can do the same.
At least in philosophical writing, we might aim to use paragraph and section breaks to separate arguments. Individual paragraphs might make their own self-contained argument or point. Multiple paragraphs working together can then build up a larger, more encompassing argument (in which case we should group those paragraphs into a section). Generally, these different levels of breaks (paragraph vs section vs chapter, etc.) serve as indicators of what level of the hierarchy we’re in while building an argument, with the conclusion of each argument being potentially usable as a premise within a higher level of abstract argument.
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Applying this understanding of paragraphs and section breaks to a non-standard philosophical example, we might look at Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. There is a striking lack of chapters in Philosophical Investigations. There are section numbers, but nothing larger than that. There are no chapters, merely hundreds of small sections, one after the other, which each range in length from a few sentences to a few paragraphs.
Wittgenstein’s style in PI might be read to imply that all of these section-broken thoughts are essentially the same level of importance. Wittgenstein might not have distinguished larger section breaks than that because he was emphasizing how all of these sections combine into a single, unified analysis. [2]
Maybe this is true, maybe it isn’t. I tend to find textual analysis like that to be suited primarily for analyzing literature, not philosophy. It is rare for me to think that my understanding of a work might be usefully informed by such stylistic analysis.
This type of analysis might go astray simply if the writer is a bad communicator—there are multiple possible explanations for why a writer put their paragraph and section breaks where they did. The writer might have had clear ideas and structured distinctions in their head that could have been easily discovered through conversation. But outside of that conversation, in their written work, they might fail to put helpful emphasis on these distinctions. This would be less a failure of argumentative thought, and more a problem of them failing to internalize the coordinating norms of person-to-person communication. [3]
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I sometimes want to get my ideas quickly recorded somewhere before I forget them, which often leads to a subversion of communicative norms—in those moments, my focus is on remembering my ideas, not communicating them to somebody else. Unfortunately, this can create problems when I want to turn those notes into a piece for others to read. Mostly, it feels like busy-work to restructure and rewrite my ideas simply for the ease of communicating them to others. Here, I see at least three places I can improve:
First, I might improve my internalization of communicative norms, such that while quickly writing out my thoughts, it becomes more automatic to write them with a communicative style.
Second, I might make it simpler to stylize my writing. For example, I have customized my MS Word’s layout and default theme. I also care about having a good and comfortable keyboard for typing, or nice paper and pens. All of this reduces the amount of time and effort it takes for me to mentally switch between writing out my thoughts and stylizing them for others to read.
Third, I might try to care more about other people’s ease of reading. Perhaps I could do this by recognizing their importance in building collective knowledge. I can also remind myself of the basic ethical ideal that my writing should not be a cause of unnecessary strain for those reading it. [4] If I had more propagandist motivations, I would also recognize that ease of communication is highly important for the spread of my ideas. [5]
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Ultimately, how much that words, punctuation, paragraphs, sections, chapters, books, volumes, subjects, et cetera are signifiers of different sections is socially determined. I am merely observing that language is being used, and that it seems like different paragraphs are being used to make distinctions between sections. As I observed before, for the genre of philosophical writing it seems like their main use is to distinguish between arguments and to show which arguments are at the same conceptual level. In fiction writing and other styles, there are other communicative norms, such as paragraph breaks between dialogue.
Deviating from these norms can decrease the readability, but writers might still consider it valuable. While I would guess that we see deviations slightly more often in literary work [6], we can also see it in philosophical work. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations, Spinoza’s Ethics, Deleuze and Guattari’s nonlinear A Thousand Plateaus, and Plato’s dialogues are all examples of works which are stylistically different from contemporary standards. [7]
I don’t recommend making these deviations unless you have a really good reason for it. I would consider a reason ‘good’ if it is clearly motivated by the philosophy you hold, and that this motivation is made clear in the process of reading the work (or at least that it’s already contextually clear from your previous writings). For most people, I would recommend focusing first on developing your ability to write within normal communicative styles. Then, when you have mastered that and it becomes apparent that a deviation from the standard style would be effective, you will have an intuitive understanding of how your deviations are affecting how your writing is being read. [8]
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In writing this, I feel like I have developed my own understanding about writing practices. This post began as a passing thought about the communicative use of paragraph breaks, and I let it lead me to conclusions I found illuminating and satisfying. In the process of writing, I listed off three ways that I believe will help me turn my basic, notes-app ideas into fully-fleshed pieces like this. Hopefully, you—the reader—also found some information which you might try to apply in your own writing and theorizing.
Footnotes & Extra Bits
[1] The ‘abstractness’ or ‘complexity’ of a concept might simply be thought of here as how commonly the concept is invoked. If it were a commonly invoked concept, there would likely be a concise way of expressing it, and it wouldn’t be so abstract of a concept. Similarly, if it were a commonly invoked concept, people would have had practice using it, and it wouldn’t be considered a complex concept.
[2] Luckily for me while learning about the Philosophical Investigations, my professor Jeremey Heis made these larger chapter breaks for us (as learning aides, not necessarily as an attempt to “fix” Wittgenstein’s style). For example, §§1-25 might be considered like a chapter called ‘Introducing Language Games’, and §§109-133 might be considered ‘The Chapter of Philosophy’.
[3] And maybe that is a failure of argumentative thought! We might believe that there is no ideal form of argumentation, merely attempts to convince people towards your beliefs, as Landemore, Mercier, and Sperber make the case for with their Argumentative Theory of Reasoning (see Landemore’s Democratic Reasoning, pp 123-130).
[4] I am reminded here of David Graeber, a person worthy of imitation.
In a text exchange with the political thinker Astra Taylor shortly before his death, she told him what a “damn good writer” he was, adding that it’s a “rare skill among lefties”. He thanked her, and said: “I call it ‘being nice to the reader’, which is an extension of the politics, in a sense.’ (Solnit)
This generous way of approaching others is very in line with the Marxist and anarchist desires to uplift and help cultivate the interests and capacities of normal people.
[5] I am reminded here of Daniel Dennett, a smart person who seems kind enough. At what I thought was the end of Intuition Pumps (I can’t actually find the paragraph anymore, so maybe it’s another book of his), he mentions that whatever contemporary philosophers think of his views, his accessible books are convincing future generations of philosophers.
[6] Does anyone remember Cormac McCarthy’s ridiculous lack of punctuation from when they were forced to read The Road in high school?
[7] Because Plato was near the early beginnings of philosophy, I don’t think it would be correct to call Plato’s works a deviation from established norms of communication—especially since the standard for communication back then was verbal conversation.
[8] I see similarities here to the way that young people are taught the 5-paragraph essay as a basic starting point. Maybe this is framing useful, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the way it is currently being taught is detrimental—students learn the 5-paragraph formula, but they should have in mind from the very beginning that these are merely training wheels which will allow them to ultimately deviate away from the formula and into normal and more practiced communicative standards.