Down with verbosity: A plea for shorter sentences

Abstract

Dear fellow researchers, please can you join me in a campaign to kill the long sentence?In recent years, I have reviewed, copy-edited, or proofread many dissertations and journal articles across a swathe of humanities and social sciences fields.In the process, I have become increasingly impatient with wordy sentences (50, 60, 70 words), replete with multiple clauses and contingent commentary.Just as difficult are short 40-or 50-word sentences with multi-syllabic words and pompous, tortuous phrasing.No sentence should be more than 35 wordsand preferably fewer words.This is so for at least three reasons.First, clarity demands succinct writing.Clarity should be at the heart of our writing.What is the point of excellent theoretical underpinnings, compelling evidence, or insightful documented findings if they are communicated in rambling multi-topic sentences that do not convey arguments, evidence, or analysis clearly?Second, all scholars need to remember that many of their readers have English as a second language.Here, in the mainly monolingual Antipodes, for example, we do not appreciate enough what it is to be a scholar researching and reading in a second (or even third) language.Imagine taking your school French or Indonesian and writing a scholarly article; your French or Indonesian could not possibly achieve that level of nuance or depth.Yet we expect international readers to engage with our work.Long complex sentences that are designed to impress an elite few may sound 'clever', but really they are just long/wordy/prolix.If we are writing for an international journal, then we should respect the international readers of that journal and avoid multi-clause sentences with contingent notions.The final main reason for achieving clarity through succinct writing is so that authors can avoid sounding as if an Artificial Intelligence (AI) machine has written their article.In this respect, I recently discovered a whole world of AI software that actually aims to help authors extend their sentences.One of the options in an AI system is called 'sentence expander'.Clearly, for some AI software, long sentences are better.It does not augur well for academic writing!Look at these two examples.The first I wrote, and the AI expansion is second, in both examples.ORIGINAL 33 words Too often authors are using lengthy sentences.Long sentences are likely to be less effective in convincing readers of your argument.Short sentences are better for clarity.'Omit Needless Words', said William Strunk.

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