Wikipedia:Proseline

A textbook example of proseline in the Trial of Saddam Hussein article (November 7, 2006). Note the series of short paragraphs starting with dates.

As an encyclopedia that can be edited at any moment by anyone anywhere, it is possible for a Wikipedia article to be written or produced on a particular current event mere hours, or even minutes, after the event occurs. Unfortunately, the inevitable scramble to add up-to-the-minute information to appropriate articles can often result in something we shall call proseline (/ˈprzln/ PROHZ-lyne)—segments of articles that attempt to be (and should be) prose, but end up looking like timelines. Being comprehensive and up-to-date is perfectly reasonable and okay to a point, but proseline tends to degrade the quality of the articles in which they reside by interrupting the natural flow with unnecessarily choppy sentences and paragraphs.


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