Keep it Short, Keep it Sweet

One of the most common issues that academic writers struggle with is overstuffed sentences. These sentences are “fully dressed”—overflowing with information, adjectives, clauses, and verbs. Overwhelmed with ideas and words, these sentences also often suffer grammatically. Unlike delicious burgers with all the toppings, these fully dressed sentences leave the reader feeling confused and unsatisfied. They are too full. But transforming our prose into short and sweet sentences is no easy feat.

As academics, we are particularly prone to long sentences, I think, because we want to convey complex ideas. We are attached to these ideas because we have spent months and years dedicated to their study. Urgency might also play a role—sometimes the flow of writing can feel so fleeting that in the effort to get everything out, we inadvertently jumble it up.

Several famous authors have proclaimed the benefit of short sentences. Umberto Eco in his How to Write a Thesis says, “You are not Proust. Do not write long sentences.” Cormac McCarthy’s advice to faculty at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico includes, “Keep sentences short, simply constructed and direct.” And in A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway reflected that “if I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.”

These sentiments are valuable: I would recommend to anyone who struggles with long sentences to put one of these quotes on their wall above their writing area. Short sentences force us to be direct about our meaning and to choose more powerful words to describe our ideas. They mark important ideas for our readers by creating a natural shift in the rhythm of reading. A short sentence makes a point. But how do we find and fix long sentences in our own writing?

1. Start with the verb. Verbs are the powerhouses of sentences. They not only determine the action, but they provide a quality to that action. Long sentences likely have two verbs doing the work that one verb could do. Take for example, “My project has the aim of exploring the relationships between musicians and dancers.” At first glance, this sentence is fine. But we are using three words that have verb forms to describe the action of “my project”: to have, to aim, to explore. A simple edit is, “My project explores...”; a more sophisticated edit might select a more interesting verb, such as “My project investigates...”
2. Watch your commas and other punctuation. A tell-tale sign of a too-long sentence that probably has other issues (such as dangling modifiers or run-on clauses) is too many commas. If your sentence has two or more commas and does not include a list, then this sentence could be a good candidate for revision. Try splitting it into two sentences—is it better? Worse?
3. Be careful with adjectives. Try a version of a long sentence with all adjectives and other “ornaments” removed. Does it still convey the same meaning? Is it more direct? Compare it with the longer version and that will help you determine which descriptors are necessary and which are clouding the waters.
4. Experiment! Sometimes long sentences are just right for what you need to do. But you won't know this unless you are willing to chop it down, re-arrange it, and make it sparse. Allow yourself the freedom to slash your words away. As academics, we can get attached to certain phrases or constructions. I encourage you to cut the chains! Release yourself from the burden of prose!