I read somewhere once that the original Unix documentation was written in a style where each clause or section of each sentence got put on a separate line. The typesetter was going to re-layout the text anyway, and with line-oriented editors like ed(1) and ex(1), it was easier to retype a whole line than to edit a few words in the middle.

In the modern age, nobody uses ed or ex, and reflowing a paragraph isn't hard, but having changes localised to a single line makes diffs easier to read and text-editor keyboard shortcuts are still fairly line-oriented, so there's still some benefit to the practice.

But when I read back over what I've written, it's hard to avoid reading it as free-verse poetry.