When is a sentence too long? It is difficult to come up with a magic number or formula for determining when a sentence is too long. A 12-word sentence that minces words can be too long, while a crystal clear, beautifully-composed 22-word sentence is sometimes just perfect. In general, though, never go beyond 30 words.
A long sentence is tiring to the eye and requires more concentration. Long is bad; you need to come up for air. Sometimes, a longer sentence may be needed to break the pattern of medium and short sentences, but even then a long sentence should not be longer than about 50 words.
A sentence often claimed to be the longest sentence ever written is in Molly Bloom's soliloquy in the James Joyce novel Ulysses (1922), which contains a "sentence" of 3,687 words. One of the longest sentences in American literature is in William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!
How to Write Simply: 9 Tips for Writing Short Sentences
- Start small.
- Think about what you're trying to say.
- Cut down your word count.
- Break up long sentences into two or more lines.
- Use the active voice.
- Remove redundant words.
- Lose fluff words.
- Write one-word and two-word sentences.
Filing a Motion. Demonstrate extraordinary circumstances. Typically courts are willing to reduce your sentence in cases of extraordinary circumstances such as terminal illness. Federal law allows a sentence reduction or modification upon motion filed by the Director of the Bureau of Prisons.
So here's the rule: your sentences should usually be about from 20 to 30 words long. If your style is breezy, 15 words would be good. Sentences with 50 or more words should be avoided if possible. Throw in a shorter sentence now and then that refocuses, summarizes, surprises.
The Importance Of Varying
Sentence Length.
6 Ways To Shorten Your Sentences And Improve Your Writing
- Use readability statistics.
- Count the commas.
- Cut unnecessary conjunctions.
- One thought per paragraph.
- Remove redundant words.
- Reduce your word count.
The simplest and best way to write a long sentence is to state the subject and verb as early as you can in the beginning of the sentence, and simply to branch to the right.
Eliminating Wordiness
- Use the Key Noun. (the doer of the action) as the Subject of the Key Verb (the main action in the sentence).
- Use Active Voice rather than Passive Voice Verbs.
- Avoid Unnecessary Language.
- Use Nouns rather than Vague Pronouns as Subjects.
- Use Verbs rather than Nouns to Express Action.
- Avoid a String of Prepositional Phrases.
1 : a trite phrase or expression also : the idea expressed by it. 2 : a hackneyed theme, characterization, or situation. 3 : something (such as a menu item) that has become overly familiar or commonplace.
Descriptive language is vivid and specific, and helps someone imagine a scene he didn't witness. The word descriptive comes from the Latin descript-, meaning "written down." Something that is descriptive uses an account of words to give us a sense of what it's like.
Redundant expressions are phrases made up of two or more words that repeat the same idea. A good example is “twelve midnight,” since “midnight” is always at 12am. Other redundant expressions include: Added bonus. Cease and desist.
Adjective: wordy. Contrast with conciseness, directness, and clarity. Wordiness, says Robert Hartwell Fiske, is "arguably the biggest obstacle to clear writing and speaking" (101 Wordy Phrases, 2005).
Redundancy is the unnecessary repetition of ideas. Wordiness is the use of several words when a few can express the same idea more clearly and concisely. On the sentence level, in general, less is more.
Intricate text is defined as overly complicated sentence structure, sometimes occurring because an inexperienced writer wants their text to give an
Like most city-ish cities? No, of course not. "Urban cities" may seem redundant, but the reporter had something else in mind. Increasingly over the last few decades, "urban" has acquired a secondary meaning: "dominated by a racial minority, usually African-American."
Plain language (also called plain writing or plain English) is communication your audience can understand the first time they read or hear it. The Plain Writing Act of 2010 defines plain language as: Language that is plain to one set of readers may not be plain to others.
To help you avoid that fate, we've put together some tips to keep in mind when you're writing and editing.
- Outline your content.
- Cut out the jargon.
- Keep it simple and to the point.
- Cut long sentences in two.
- Remove excessive verbiage.
- Use contractions.
- Remove extra punctuation.
- Use the active voice.
If you find that you have a lot of short, choppy sentences in your writing, here are five ways to improve them.
- Conjunctions. Try combining sentences using a conjunction.
- Subordination. Subordination involves combining a main idea with an incomplete clause using a connector.
- Appositives.
- Modifying Phrases.
- Reworked Ideas.
For Short, Choppy Sentences
- Combine Sentences With Conjunctions: Join complete sentences, clauses, and phrases with conjunctions: and, but, or, nor, yet, for, so.
- Link Sentences Through Subordination: Link two related sentences to each other so that one carries the main idea and the other is no longer a complete sentence (subordination).
4 Ways to Eliminate Unnecessary Words in Your Writing
- Replace Redundant Adjectives. A good first step in reducing wordiness is pruning redundant adjectives.
- Remove Redundant Pairs and Categories.
- Take Out Words That State the Obvious and Add Excess Detail.
- Remove Unnecessary Determiners and Modifiers.
How to avoid verbosity.
- Use active verbs: Make the subject of a sentence do something.
- Avoid writing long and wordy sentences:
- Avoid using phrases that do not add meaning to your sentence.
- Avoid Using Noun Forms of Verbs:
Eliminate FluffMost filler words are adverbs and adjectives. Use William Zinsser's technique and read your sentences aloud. Note the rhythm and sound. Do your adverbs and adjectives overpower your verbs?
wordy, verbose, prolix, diffuse mean using more words than necessary to express thought. wordy may also imply loquaciousness or garrulity. a wordy speech verbose suggests a resulting dullness, obscurity, or lack of incisiveness or precision.
Being wordy isn't bad, it just means that we can be rebellious every now and then in the face of the literature police and just express ourselves the way we want to, how we want to. No one would tell Picasso or Rembrandt how to paint, and likewise we don't tell writers how to write.
How to Avoid Wordiness
- Cut Adjectives and Adverbs. This is something Ernest Hemingway became famous for.
- Eliminate Redundant Words and Phrases.
- Don't Use Unnecessary Prepositions.
- Avoid Passive Voice.
- Use Simple Past/Present Instead of Present/Past Perfect and Present/Past Continuous.
- Synthesis.
- Nick.
Wordiness can sneak into your paper without you even realizing it. When we draft, we often write how we think or speak. These extra words, however, need to be eliminated in academic writing in order to improve clarity.
7 Things to Remember to Avoid Redundancies in Writing
- Avoid using double negatives. This is a basic concept in writing.
- Beware of pleonasm.
- Be careful when using abbreviations.
- Use intensifiers appropriately.
- Be conscious of language origin.
- Remove unnecessary phrases.
- Always observe the “less is more” rule.
Which strategy is the best way to improve clarity in a wordy sentence? Use fewer powerful words.
10 tips for more concise writing
- Start sentences with the subject. This is both a grammatical point and a content point.
- Use the active verb.
- Get rid of adverbs and reduce your adjectives.
- Use the shortest form of the word.
- Use the shortest form of a phrase.
- Keep your sentences to 25-30 words.
- Keep your paragraphs to 250-300 words.
- Don't refer back.
worthless, needless, superfluous, gratuitous, redundant, useless, avoidable, unneeded, irrelevant, futile, accidental, additional, beside the point, casual, chance, dispensable, excess, exorbitant, expendable, extraneous.
A person can overcome defensiveness when their own writing is constructively criticized, by mastering your own nonverbal communication skills. Control your body language and facial expressions and accept the fact that you are only being helped.
We use extensive verbs to say what the subject is doing. Extensive verbs are most other verbs, they do not have a subject complement. Extensive means to cover a wider area, it takes information away from the subject. Words or phrases following an extensive verb work as the verb's object.
concise, terse, succinct, laconic, summary, pithy, compendious mean very brief in statement or expression. concise suggests the removal of all that is superfluous or elaborative. a concise description terse implies pointed conciseness.
