Often in writing we’re told to write short sentences. The idea is good, but short, choppy sentence structure is not always the best way to convey an idea to the reader. The rhythm of short sentences can be tiresome to the reader and it can obscure the relation between ideas. We want our words to flow naturally so the reader isn’t distracted. Reading should flow with a good rhythm just like music.
Varying the length and structure of your sentences will be more appealing to the reader. Just as a certain clothing style is flattering on some people, the sentence structure you use for writing can flatter the writing and make your article or story more pleasing.
In the outline process it’s okay to use short sentences, these can give you solid ideas of how to form your writing. Once you begin the actual writing process you need to use sentence structure that flows. You can use coordinating conjunctions to combine two sentences into one, as long as they carry the same idea or enhance each other. Coordinating conjunctions include ( and, but, for, or, nor, yet, so). I must advise caution here though because you do not want every sentence in a paragraph to be combined with coordinating conjunctions. That would be boring and make you look bad as a writer.
Examples of combining short, choppy sentences:
1. Larry beat Ken in the mile race. Ken was Larry’s best friend. Ken was also Larry’s chief rival in track. Larry felt proud of his victory. He also felt sorry about Ken’s defeat.
As you can see, these sentences are good for an outline to form your ideas and help establish the mental relationship between Larry and Ken. Using this sentence structure in your final work would be annoying to the reader and make it difficult for the reader to establish the relationship between the two boys.
If we combine those sentences we can get a clearer idea of their relationship.
2. After Larry beat Ken in the mile race, he felt proud of his victory but sorry about the defeat of his best friend and chief rival in track.
Another example of how we can combine sentences:
1. John is a lawyer. He wins most of his cases. John is having a difficult time with a custody case.
2. John, a lawyer who wins most of his cases, is having a difficult time with a custody case.
Earlier I mentioned combining sentences with coordinating conjunctions. Let’s look at some examples of coordinating with conjunctions:
*In many fiction novels, politicians grow too powerful. They try to take over the world.
**In many fiction novels, politicians grow too powerful and try to take over the world.
It’s good to write your ideas in short sentence form to help you, as the writer, make relations between ideas, but for the reader we need to bridge those gaps to make it easier for them to read.
Writing well and using good sentence structure is one area that all writers stumble with, even veteran writers have to keep the structure of their sentences in check.
If you practice combining sentences it will smooth out your writing so that it flows more naturally for the reader. Read your material out loud to determine if it sounds natural.
Hello Patti! Nice article on writng. I use short sentences to help outline a future article all the time. It is amazing to me anyone would advise another to write using short sentences the you describe in this article. It makes reading an article a chore! Thanks for putting out the good advice!
Thanks for the comment Keith.
There are times we should use short sentences. I've discovered that Twitter is a good tool to practice cutting long sentences down. It's actually a fun little challenge to yourself.
As always, thanks for the tips on article writing. This is the type of stuff they should be teaching early in school but often either gets forgotten or skipped. Definitely an important topic!
Thanks Jonathan,
I thought it would be helpful to write about writing basics; a general refresher course in basic English class. English was a mediocre class for me. I don't think it's overly important to know about diagramming sentences but as writers it is important to refresh ourselves in sentence structure, etc.
I still have my college English books so as I refresh myself in the subject, it also makes good writing material. I ranted yesterday in my own blog about rehashed writing tips that only tell you to "write better content". I've thought on this for a long time and the best way to write better is to go back and study up on basic English class, sentence structure, etc. Then the idea hit me to share the information, especially since many readers here aren't native English speakers (or writers).
It's not the most exciting subject but hopefully a few readers will get some useful tidbits from it.
It's refreshing to see these sort of basics covered. The advent of text messaging, Twitter, Facebook, and such have made short, choppy, ill-formed sentences far too prevalent. I'm an advocate of driving the bar back up rather than pandering to less sophisticated writing styles.
Skills not challenged will stagnate and written language proficiencies are certainly no exception. Most of us are well-educated professionals; we can and should do better than 4th grade grammar.
Thanks Rob,
It's always nice to see a fellow writer who believes we should raise the standards of writing.
Great article for bloggers. Can you recommend a e-book that covers all the basics of English for a good blogger?
@Tweakwindows; Unfortunately I can't. Most ebooks contain only vague tips and are used for marketing purposes.
My best suggestion is to find a used book store and purchase an "old fashioned" college English book.
Thanks for the info.