Sentence Length: The Power Of Placing Periods (UPDATED 2024)

by | Creative Writing Craft and Techniques, Punctuation | 14 comments

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Sentence Length: The Power Of Placing Periods

As writers, we are advised to vary sentence length in our work or run the risk of either boring the reader to death or coming off as an amateur. Readers of creative writing are heavily influenced by the flow of the writing and can easily be turned off by work that consists of nothing but three-word sentences or page-long paragraphs of long, loopy sentences. Punctuation matters!

Today’s reader tends to favor short sentence lengths—clear and direct writing rather than flowery, convoluted prose. It’s a busy world full of information, and simple, easy-to-read sentences with powerful verbs are appealing. Sentence length can have an enormous effect on your readers. Martin Cutts, in Oxford Guide to Plain English, puts it well:

“More people fear snakes than full stops, so they recoil when a long sentence comes hissing across the page.”

But there’s a time and place for both short, powerful sentences and for more complicated and complex sentences. A good piece of writing involves a harmonious arrangement of these elements to create a smooth, natural flow.

Sentence Length: How To Use Short Sentences Effectively

A good writer can achieve straightforward prose without resorting to primer-style writing (See Dick run. See Jane run. See Dick and Jane run!). Too many short, choppy sentences creates a jarring effect for the reader, especially when each sentence has the same construction: I woke early. It was cold. I looked out the window. There was snow.

An example of effectively using short, powerful sentences to create an impact can be found in The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan:

That night I sat on Tyan-yu’s bed and waited for him to touch me. But he didn’t. I was relieved.

The paragraph gets the point across powerfully and concisely and without filler.

Another example can be found in the stylistic elements of To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The novel is written in first person, and at the beginning of the novel, the narrator is a six-year-old girl. Lee uses short and simple sentences that gradually become more sophisticated and mature, reflecting the girl’s own growing maturity throughout the book.

Sentence Length: How To Use Long Sentences Effectively

Readers tend to associate long, convoluted sentence structure with “old-fashioned” writers—the flowery prose of 19th-century poets and novelists—but complex and lengthy sentences can be very powerful in modern writing. Lengthier sentences are used to investigate an idea more thoroughly, give vivid description, and develop tension.

Ernest Hemingway is a master of tight writing. In The Old Man and the Sea, the very first paragraph tells readers just about everything they need to know in plain, simple language and with a minimum of fuss. But this paragraph, from A Farewell to Arms, shows his skill with more complex construction, giving the reader a sense of the character’s languor:

They left me alone and I lay in bed and read the papers awhile, the news from the front, and the list of dead officers with their decorations and then reached down and brought up the bottle of Cinzano and held it straight up on my stomach, the cool glass against my stomach, and took little drinks making rings on my stomach from holding the bottle there between drinks, and watched it get dark outside over the roofs of the town.

How To Choose The Best Sentence Length

Sentence length can influence the mood of the piece. If you’re trying to show a moment of reflection, a long, leisurely sentence captures that sense of nostalgia. If your character is in mortal danger, shorter sentences can punctuate the sense of urgency.

If you’re concerned that your writing is either too choppy or too flowery, review it with an eye toward sentence length.

  • Is it varied?
  • Does it fit the mood you’re trying to convey?
  • Do you heavily favor short, simple sentences, or does the piece contain too many paragraph-long sentences?

Writer’s Relief is an author’s submission service; our Review Board receives hundreds of submissions that don’t make the cut simply because the writing isn’t strong enough. Whether you’re interested in becoming a Writer’s Relief client or you’re submitting directly to literary agents and editors, make sure you’ve used sentence length (and construction) effectively!

Whether you want to take the traditional publishing route or prefer to self-publish, we can help. Give us a call, and we will point you in the right direction!

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Questions for WritersQUESTION: What do you think of the trend toward short, narrowly focused sentences? Love it or hate it?

14 Comments

  1. George M. Akerley

    It’s clear that the topical matter is critical. If, as in the Hemingway examples, the story is relatively simple or startlingly complex, the writer must consider varying the style. I think it takes a seasoned writer to put together lengthy and meaningful sentences.

    Reply
    • Michelle

      I think writing is out of style and demand now. Everything is quick. We are overloaded with free entertainment. Before only so many people could be published. Now anyone can be published. Everyone can post on the net. We are now used to fast entertainment. YouTube, Netflix, free movie apps, fire stick, Roku, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, email, messenger, YouTube messenger, blogs etc. When do we have time to read long winded flowery novels? I hate descriptive writing. I much rather them tell me what they are saying. I don’t want to have to work and figure out what they are saying. And please get to the point. It’s sad in a way that’s how it is. I think the college curriculum in writing and creative writing is outdated. They need to keep up, because what they are learning isn’t useful in today’s world.

      Reply
  2. Wendy

    I’m not surprised that the trend is towards shorter sentences. People have shorter attention spans, follow the “I can multitask” fallacy, and, as a result, have gotten too stupid to process complex thoughts. That last sentence is typical of how I write. One precise thought, ergo, one sentence. Some might have broken it up into smaller chunks; most would have just thrown out words until they were confortable with it, not caring if the result becomes why-bother-writing-it-at-all imprecise.

    Reply
  3. kendo@yourkindleblog

    I firmly believe that shorter, punchier sentences help to lift the pace of a piece of work. But readers, like sprinters, need to take a breather. This is where the longer sentences can be best used. Slowing the pace down before another sprint. I’m certain some will disagree with me and say that you can achive the same effect with a longer sentence, properly constructed and punctuated; that takes a little more skill to pull off though.

    Reply
  4. David

    I tend to prefer descriptive writers who use longer sentences, with more concatenating clauses, as long as they keep things coherent and aren’t just wasting words. When I read, I do it to slow down and immerse myself. Well-crafted longer sentences can be wonderful aids to this. A welcome escape from the tweets, texts, bytes and blurbs that have come to dominate our communication.

    Reply
  5. Chandru

    IMHO, both short and long sentences are part of a writer’s arsenal. Each type of sentence has its own purpose and best used within a suitable context. A good writer knows when to vary sentence length to achieve a desired effect.

    Reply
  6. Rod

    My humble opinion is that if the writing doesn’t captures the reader’s attention it doesn’t matter the sentence length. But if it doesn’t grab the reader and is not interesting to the reader, sentence length is not likely to resolve the problem.

    Reply
  7. Tired and Bored

    I stumbled on this article because I have a new client who will not allow any sentence longer than 20 words. Where they got this limit from I have no idea. Hell, the first sentence of this post contains 29 words.

    I am not sure I can do this. I’m being asked to write 10-20K words per week for them. To manually check all my sentences for this crazy arbitrary limit seems ridiculous (there’s no program that does this, to my knowledge).

    I realize that if I have to check each sentence manually, so does the client, if they want to enforce this rule. But I don’t want to run afoul of the editors by constantly violating it, which I know I will if I’m not counting every damn sentence and they happen to check.

    Thoughts? My writing has already become so bad, thanks to content farms and the demand of writing online copy for 8th-grade reading levels.

    Reply
    • Writer's Relief Staff

      We’ve never heard of this type of word count restriction, so unfortunately we don’t have any helpful insights for you. Good luck and you have our sympathy!

      Reply
      • Debby Detering

        I use the Autocrit program for checking my work. I write for several age groups, so sentence length can be important. Autocrit tells me how many sentences in a given selection of text are in various word ranges, like 1-9 and 10-19, etc. There are many other useful features in autocrit besides not only basic spelling but flagging possibly-wrong words.

        Reply
        • Blog Editor

          Thanks, Debby!

          Reply
  8. Jaydian Hexial Cruz Soto

    people say lower sentences have more detail than shorter sentences that is not true if the sentence is short and do not have any detail in the sentence it means that it won’t catch a readers attention if the sentence is to long and has detail some might prefer the sentence but others might disagree if the sentence is short but has detail it might catch a readers attention in there opinion

    by Jaydian Hexial Cruz Soto

    Reply
  9. Sushma A. Singh

    From a poet’s perspective , more than the length , it could, perhaps be the depth of a given set of framed words that pulls and holds the attention span of a reader. Must add however, that too long or too short sentences need to be exceptionally compelling to be able to do so.

    Reply
    • Blog Editor

      Thanks, Sushma!

      Reply

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