From the course: Writing in Plain English (2016)

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Simplify sentence structure

Simplify sentence structure

From the course: Writing in Plain English (2016)

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Simplify sentence structure

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- Go. Stay. Stop. Sit. Stand. Look at those words again. How many sentences with those five words? If you said five sentences, you're correct. Each isa verb with an understood subject of you. They're called commands. Now take a moment to look at this group of words. How many sentences? One, with 94 words. This was professor Butler's first place prize sentence, in Further Reflections on the Conversations of our Time, an article in the scholarly journal, Diacritics and this sentence won first place. For what, you may be wondering? The bad writing contest. Your next question may be, "What difference does it make "if a sentence is one word or close to 100?" The readability of your writing, of course. The average sentence length is part of how readability is measured. Depending on the study, the average sentence should be between 15 and 20 words. More than that, and your sentence probably is trying to do too much, to discuss more than one idea, and is hard to read. Your goal is to keep all…

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