Playing with Short Sentences

If you write long, elaborate sentences with multiple asides or interjecting clauses-and many of us do-you might experiment with a sprinkling of shorter sentences.

Short sentences give big ideas room to breathe.

When I work with nonfiction authors on their manuscripts, I frequently ask the authors to break up a few of their longer sentences into shorter ones.

The authors are smart people, explaining complex ideas. The writing mirrors their thought processes, guiding the reader through the author’s reasoning.

But when too many length sentences chain together, the reader has to pick their way through the prose carefully. Adding a few short sentences clears a path for the reader’s comprehension.

If you love writing long sentences, here are three reasons to break a few of them up in your work.

1. Readers will understand you more easily

If you ever see a “reading level” assigned to writing, it’s probably based on the Flesch Reading Ease assessment.

This score sounds very scientific, but in fact it’s a simple calculation based on two factors:

• Number of words divided by sentences (or average sentence length)
• Number of syllables divided by words…