
Long sentences - luu
http://yarchive.net/blog/long_sentences.html
======
Rainymood
“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences
are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening.
The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck
record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length,
and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a
lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length.
And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with
a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and
builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash
of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.” - Gary
Provost

~~~
webnrrd2k
Like a lot of things, I think it depends mostly on the effort the writer puts
into mastering his craft. I prefer the variety in length, and agree with it as
a general rule. However, one counterpoint: Hemmingway seems to have done fine
with (mostly) short sentences.

------
RyanMcGreal
The author seems to be deliberately trying to manufacture long sentences to
make his point, mainly by taking two related sentences and pushing them
together with a semicolon. It serves no purpose in improving comprehension and
comes at the cost of making parsing more difficult. It feels rather like the
sort of hypercorrection [1] that people sometimes make when they're trying to
sound erudite.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection)

~~~
idlewords
Another thing people do when they're trying to sound erudite is ostentatiously
[1] link definitions to concepts they think their readers can't look up for
themselves.

1\. Don't do that

~~~
copsarebastards
Just because I can look it up for myself doesn't mean I don't appreciate
having a link, especially if the writer went to the effort of choosing a link
that's better than the first Google search result.

1\. Since apparently we’re overthinking things, have you considered that your
oversensitivity to minor perceived offenses is because you’ve never been
punched?

------
grellas
It is a good rule of thumb in writing not to make the reader work hard to get
your meaning, to have to blast for it if you will.

Brevity promotes simplicity and simple things are much easier to understand
than are those that are prolix.

So writing in a style consisting primarily of short, easy-to-understand
sentences is in itself a good rule of thumb when aiming to write well.

But it is only a rule of thumb, as I see it, and when it is enshrined as
something more, it can do more harm than good.

The English language is a marvel of complexity and has so many rich, diverse,
and colorful elements that you cheat only yourself as a writer if you fail to
give full scope to such elements in choosing how to express yourself in the
written word. You want to make a driving argument? By all means, use active
verbs to punch along short, compact thoughts with an aggressive rhythm. Want
to weave fascinating characterization? Well, then maybe relax the feel a bit
and, with Dickens, unwind a string of long, flowing sentences that carry your
reader along into a wonderfully imaginative series of pictures, running page
after page, that hardly turn on being short, compact, and punchy - indeed,
that are the very opposite. The point is not that you want to go to one
extreme or the other. The point is that, as one who seeks to write well, you
should avail yourself of the rich set of tools available to you without
feeling bound to adhere to any form of absolute rules about how best to use
them.

So, write away! Go for feel. Go for rhythm. Go for clarity. Go for what best
suits your purpose.

And, oh, yes, do keep it short and simple, except when you find it doesn't
suit your purpose. A rule of thumb is just that. In the end, do what gets your
point across for the long-suffering reader who deserves to have it done well.

------
smanuel
Disclaimer: I'm not a native English speaker.

Sorry but IMO the author has failed to prove his case. The text is not easy to
read, and it's hard to follow the author's thought.

So long sentences and long paragraphs definitely don't help. It's either that
or I should get tested for ADHD.

~~~
ticviking
I think that's the what the author missed.

Short sentences are not about simplicity, they are about accessibility. While
it was not hard for me to read his text. It did not flow, and was not easy to
follow. Long sentences distract the reader with their additional complexity.
Instead of being able to focus on the content, the reader must decipher the
meaning. Then they can engage the idea.

Making it harder to understand content is a terrible way to communicate.

------
michaelhoffman
Much of my job is scientific writing. I don't see long sentences as something
that is automatically bad. I do see them as a kind of "writing smell" (much
like a "code smell") that _can_ indicate something hard to understand. And
often the long sentences could be bisected with an increase of understanding.

When possible I write with a text editor and LaTeX, with one sentence per
line. This makes it really easy to identify sentences that might possibly be
too long.

~~~
dmlorenzetti
One sentence per line is also an excellent strategy for when it comes time to
"diff" two files. It helps diff identify edits (by giving it more anchoring
lines to figure out what's actually changed), and it makes the output much
easier to read.

~~~
tbrgmnn
This was discussed here before: "One sentence per line, please",
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4642395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4642395)

------
eru
As for functions, there is an explicit benefit in cutting your longer (pure!)
functions into a few shorter ones if possible:

Functions communicate with the outside world only via arguments and returned
values. The explicit split reassures the reader that this is indeed the case,
and thus every reader doesn't have to establish this fact via careful
reasoning again and again.

A long function might indeed be simple, but you never know until you check
carefully.

(This only applies to pure functions. Natural language sentences and side
effecting procedures are messier.)

~~~
blt
another way to accomplish this goal is to write your function using only const
variables. every time you'd mutate a variable, use a new const variable
instead. you end up transforming the code into static-single-assignment form,
which is what compilers do anyway, so you can be sure it won't degrade
performance.

this style really makes you wish C/C++ had if expressions. you end up using a
lot of ternary operators to compensate.

it makes the code a bit more verbose, but its worlds better than poring
through a function to make sure nothing is mutated in an unexpected way.

~~~
mattnewport
I actually prefer ternary expressions in many situations, once you're familiar
with the syntax they're more concise and more clearly an expression rather
than flow control.

------
mattlutze
I've always learned the edict to simplify writing from as: when writing, try
and keep it to simple, single compound, or single complex sentences. Rather
than "don't do ___", it's "freely express yourself with ____".

Outside anything else, it's a more pleasant way to approach the topic, and
there's a ton of freedom in it. Yes, it's similar to prescribing a word count
or a page count because it puts a more-easily measured test on the writing.
But it's also an indicating function to help stop a writer from introducing
confusion through their grammar.

Some industries have done quite a bit of research into the subject. Take, for
example, the aerospace industry's Simplified Technical English[1][2]. Here,
research into the readability of flight and maintenance manuals identified
that shorter sentences were easier to understand for English-as-a-Second-
Language speakers. A grammar was developed to reduce some of English's
flexibility and make construction more predictable. This, paired with shorter
sentences, dramatically increased the usability of print media for aerospace
and defense applications.

Shorter or simpler sentence construction can ultimately free the writer to be
more expressive and to more clearly express his or her ideas.

1:
[http://www.plainlanguagenetwork.org/conferences/2002/aecma/a...](http://www.plainlanguagenetwork.org/conferences/2002/aecma/aecma.pdf)

2: [http://www.asd-ste100.org/](http://www.asd-ste100.org/)

~~~
davegauer
_I 've always learned the edict to simplify writing from as:..._

I'm terribly sorry, but after scanning that several times, my parser grew
weary and I found that I did not have the courage to go on.

------
davelnewton
Writers are often advised to avoid long sentences. This is obviously wrong:
the thing to avoid are complicated sentences. Long sentences can be simple if
they don't require the reader to remember previous parts in order to parse the
rest. Instead, each part extends the thought made in the previous one, with
appropriate punctuation showing the relationship between the two; this sort of
sentence can go on for lines without confusing anyone. A confusing sentence
requires the reader to remember which verb was used forty words back, before
it went off on a tangent. The cure for such sentences isn't simply bisecting
them. Rearranging can bring separateed pieces of an idea together; if that
doesn't work, one must drop the idea then explicitly take it up again later.
Or, more brutally, axe the tangential remark. Not everything needs to be said,
but if it does, say it somewhere else.

Seventy words shorter. I would have done the rest but I expired.

------
putzdown
The argument would be more compelling from a more compelling writer. The
second sentence, "It’s one of the pieces of advice that I have always
completely disregarded, as being obviously wrong..." contains a comma that
hasn't appealed to the English eye since Jane Austen and is in any case
unnecessary. Physician, heal thyself.

~~~
insickness
The next sentence should lose the comma as well.

"A sentence that is long can still be quite simple, if it doesn’t require the
reader to remember previous parts of the sentence in order to parse the rest."

It's almost as if he's using unnecessary commas to make up for the long
sentence.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
The pause from the comma makes the sentence come off a bit condescending. I
felt like I was being talked down to.

------
harperlee
As others have already pointed out, the author does not seem to command long
sentences enough. But it can be a good choice for streams-of-consciousness;
Marcel Proust is a good example of it. Here are his five longest sentences:

[https://nathanbrixius.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/the-five-
long...](https://nathanbrixius.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/the-five-longest-
proust-sentences/)

In general, I'd recommend to read some Proust as his style is completely
against the current trend of short, direct sentences à la Hemingway, and that
can be refreshing!

By the way, I started reading Proust because of Nabokov's Lectures on
Literature:

[http://www.amazon.com/Lectures-Literature-Vladimir-
Nabokov/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Lectures-Literature-Vladimir-
Nabokov/dp/0156027755)

Which I recommend wholeheartedly.

~~~
mattlutze
As art this ^ sort of thing can be excused.

I would certainly hope that in most business or communication contexts, people
aren't going to think a Proustian stream-of-consciousness rat nest is an
acceptable piece of writing.

------
rayiner
Because ambiguities in English sentences often cannot be resolved until the
end,[1] readers tend to parse whole sentences before trying to fully
understand them. Short sentences are a way of forcing readers to fully digest
each thought before moving on to the next one.

Short sentences have additional benefits for persuasive writing (particularly
legal writing). It's hard to hide anything in a short, simple sentence. Using
them is a way of signaling your confidence in what you're saying.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence)

~~~
copsarebastards
You’re right; to humans, short sentences do signal persuasive arguments and
confidence in your ideas. And not without reason. People often speak
longwindedly when they are trying to hide something.

But there is another reason someone might use long sentences. They might be
trying to express a complicated idea. Sometimes an idea cannot expressed in a
short sentence. Usually you can break up a complex idea into a few short
sentences, but that might make the reading choppy and hard to follow. A long
sentence leads its reader through the connections between ideas. In contrast,
separate sentences express the ideas and leave it up to the reader to figure
out what the connections are between the ideas.

This leaves us with an apparent cognitive bias: if we are distrustful of long
sentences, we become distrustful of complex ideas.

Given this, I wonder if modern anti-intellectualism stems from this sensible
defensive mechanism.

~~~
harryh
I don't think that's a cognitive bias. We should be inherently more suspicious
of complex ideas. Complex ideas are more likely to be wrong than simple ideas
due to the fact that their correctness rests on a greater number of
assumptions.

~~~
rayiner
I think there is an interesting parallel to code here. Its not uncommon for
published algorithms to be ignored by practitioners in favor of simpler ones
because of the perception that they are too complicated with too many corner
cases. SSA-PRE comes to mind.

------
Practicality
You're just compromising. Removing complication does make it easier to
understand. _Short_ and simple is even easier.

However, it's _hard_ to write that way, so most don't bother. If we rewrote
your essay with a mixture of short and long sentences it would be stronger.

Shorter sentences can also seem less thoughtful—even childlike. That doesn't
mean they are.

------
andybak
His paragraphs are way too long for my tastes.

------
awjr
I write a lot of stuff, trying to churn out one post per week or so, sometimes
more, sometimes less (at
[http://cyclebath.org.uk/](http://cyclebath.org.uk/)).

If you are writing for a broad audience I try not to get too complicated.
These days, I usually take the final post, and just throw it up onto
[http://www.hemingwayapp.com/](http://www.hemingwayapp.com/) to get a feel for
how well it reads.

As an experiment I tried to get a "Very Good". Each sentence was clean, had
one idea in it, but the flow of the post was stilted. It removed all passion.

However I can be too clever for my own good. Communicating ideas in the
simplest terms is exceptionally important. I get too involved in story
telling. The Hemmingway App enables a good compromise.

------
arca_vorago
For me, it's not whether the sentence is too complicated or too long, but the
tools you use within it to make it _stick_ (not the best word but I can't
think of a better one at the moment) in the readers or listeners mind.

One of my favorite classes in uni was rhetoric, and one of my favorite books
to this day is Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric. I highly suggest it as
a tote around, open to a random page and read as much as you like and never be
disappointed reading.

[http://www.amazon.com/Farnsworths-Classical-English-
Rhetoric...](http://www.amazon.com/Farnsworths-Classical-English-Rhetoric-
Farnsworth/dp/1567923852)

------
alricb
ObPierreBourdieu:

> This structure which is present in every artistic genre, and has been for a
> long time, today tends to work as a mental structure, organizing the
> production and perception of products: the opposition between art and money
> (the "commercial") is the generating principle of most of the judgments
> which, in matters of theatre, cinema, painting, literature, claim to
> establish the frontier between what is art and what is not, between
> "bourgeois" art and "intellectual" art, between "traditional" art and
> "avant-garde" art.

(from Pierre Bourdieu, Les règles de l'art, free translation)

~~~
abecedarius
I found that hard to follow -- was that your intent? (What does 'this
structure' refer to? What does it have to do with 'the opposition'? Are they
the same?)

~~~
alricb
I didn't write it, Pierre Bourdieu did (in French, but my translation follows
the sentence fairly closely), and he has stated that he writes like that so
that he's hard to quote. In fact, to really understand the sentence, you'd
need to read the one before it, and probably the one before that, and they're
all about as complicated and hard to understand; you find yourself having to
turn to the previous page just to remember what the subject of the sentence
was.

------
platz
> And the pieces do have to be simpler, for the effort to make sense;
> otherwise the reader of the code is left contemplating not just a horrible
> mess, but a horrible mess that has metastasized.

This is called "Bulldozer Code"

~~~
Gibbon1
Congratulations for reading the article and exacting content.

I think the meta observation is there are rules imposed on students to prevent
them from developing bad habits. But these aren't hard rules in practice. Same
applies to code slopping.

~~~
platz
I find your tone unnecessarily arrogant and passive-aggressive.

The point was (which the author made) that simply shortening sentences doesn't
necessarily fix a problem with complexity, just like breaking up code without
solving the complexity issues also doesn't necessarily fix the problem.

Congratulations for being a supercilious jerk.

------
Gibbon1

                   Pedro comacho
     The former informer of the secret police
        Is still standing outside the club
             Pretending to be blind
        He watches the last plane to miami
      Disappearing in a flaming purple sky
                 Now he knows
           He has been left behind
    

For those that missed the last plane to Miami (meaning all of you), the author
was bitching that the rule in programming 'functions should be short, one
page, etc' is as wrong as the rule that in writing sentences should be short.

------
mrbill
YArchive is one of my favorite "tons of useful discussions" sites for when I
want to enjoy what the Internet used to be like in usenet's heyday.

------
blunte
It's been quite some time since I was in school, but it seems the author
breaks grammatical rules regarding the number of phrases and clauses that can
be strung together with punctuation. In addition, he uses a semicolon where a
dash was necessary.

It's dangerous to publicly give a lesson as we sometimes stumble during our
lecture (as I probably have done in my comments on the author's essay :) ).

------
stevewilhelm
“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make
it shorter." \- Blaise Pascal

------
hellbanner
Speed reading technique: read 1/3 over on line 1, then 2/3 over on line 1,
then 1/3 over on line 2, 2/3 on line 2.. etc. Drastically increases speed,
even over the Gary Provost quote.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
It slowed me down. I was too busy thinking "1/3 2/3 1/3...".

:)

~~~
hellbanner
Just visualize it.. :)

------
majkinetor
Is there any science available about pure physical aspect of long sentence? I
mean... more words to read might equal to more resources spent ... like ATP or
neurotransmiters

------
vacri
A comma splice is a comma splice, and subbing in a colon doesn't change that.
A semi-colon, the bastard offspring of the two, does... curious.

