Phenomenal analysis of syntactic evolution. The Tyndale/Cranmer argument about finite verbs structuring modern English is the kind of linguistic history that gets lost in shallow "just write shorter" takes. The punctuation point is huge too, swapping colons for periods artificially deflates sentence length metrics without actually changing cognitive load. I've seen entire content strategy teams obsess over readibility scores that basically just count characters between periods, missing the entire syntatic complexity dimension you lay out here.
I restacked this article with my thoughts, but wanted to share here as well:
I don’t think there is an ideal sentence length. And I’m not just saying that as someone who is a huge Dickens fan.
I think the best sentence length is actually sentence length variation. All short sentences and it feels robotic and doesn’t have enough flow (too many sentence pauses). Too long of sentences and you can easily lose the reader and fail to communicate the purpose/idea. You should have a mixture of both to give a more musical and digestible flow to your writing.
When I was teaching English, I directly taught sentence length variation and had my students go back through their essays and write how many words each sentence had. It wasn’t a problem to have a “long” or “short” sentence back to back… but three of them back to back? Or four of them? Or five of them?
Having them edit and analyze their writing using this lens significantly increased the readability and the effectiveness of their thesis.
I think the ten to twelve word sentence is a great concept to get writers to THINK about sentence length. But that sentence length alone in repetition is going to bore a reader pretty quick.
Very interesting, but I am skeptical regarding your use of translated examples, in particular examples from the Bible. In moving from the original Hebrew, there have been many different translations, some with lengthy 18th century sounding prose and some with more modern short sentences.
My unscientific observation from reading books from various periods is that sentence length was much longer in the 19th Century than it was in either the 18th or 20th Centuries. The 19th Century seemed to be a height of language floridity. Without going back further than the 19th, I’m not sure how reliable a conclusion we can draw about long-term English language trends.
Fascinating analysis! Do you see any tension between the ideas that today writing is more clear by converging on daily speaking style while the older English literature was much more likely to be read aloud to an audience? The section about Aristotle makes sense if he believed most of his audience would hear his prose rather than read it directly. The rhythmic feel definitely helps the audience stay engaged, as preachers know!
A really lovely piece marred by an entirely unnecessary tendentious jab. The time past for sermons—for what earthly reason? I suppose that we’re much too far gone to have any use for the moral depth of the Anglican divines?
Phenomenal analysis of syntactic evolution. The Tyndale/Cranmer argument about finite verbs structuring modern English is the kind of linguistic history that gets lost in shallow "just write shorter" takes. The punctuation point is huge too, swapping colons for periods artificially deflates sentence length metrics without actually changing cognitive load. I've seen entire content strategy teams obsess over readibility scores that basically just count characters between periods, missing the entire syntatic complexity dimension you lay out here.
It's quite funny to imagine the King James Bible as having had a "content strategy" team, in its own way.
This was beautifully done. Thank you.
I restacked this article with my thoughts, but wanted to share here as well:
I don’t think there is an ideal sentence length. And I’m not just saying that as someone who is a huge Dickens fan.
I think the best sentence length is actually sentence length variation. All short sentences and it feels robotic and doesn’t have enough flow (too many sentence pauses). Too long of sentences and you can easily lose the reader and fail to communicate the purpose/idea. You should have a mixture of both to give a more musical and digestible flow to your writing.
When I was teaching English, I directly taught sentence length variation and had my students go back through their essays and write how many words each sentence had. It wasn’t a problem to have a “long” or “short” sentence back to back… but three of them back to back? Or four of them? Or five of them?
Having them edit and analyze their writing using this lens significantly increased the readability and the effectiveness of their thesis.
I think the ten to twelve word sentence is a great concept to get writers to THINK about sentence length. But that sentence length alone in repetition is going to bore a reader pretty quick.
Very interesting, but I am skeptical regarding your use of translated examples, in particular examples from the Bible. In moving from the original Hebrew, there have been many different translations, some with lengthy 18th century sounding prose and some with more modern short sentences.
My unscientific observation from reading books from various periods is that sentence length was much longer in the 19th Century than it was in either the 18th or 20th Centuries. The 19th Century seemed to be a height of language floridity. Without going back further than the 19th, I’m not sure how reliable a conclusion we can draw about long-term English language trends.
Fascinating analysis! Do you see any tension between the ideas that today writing is more clear by converging on daily speaking style while the older English literature was much more likely to be read aloud to an audience? The section about Aristotle makes sense if he believed most of his audience would hear his prose rather than read it directly. The rhythmic feel definitely helps the audience stay engaged, as preachers know!
One of the best things I've read all year.
A really lovely piece marred by an entirely unnecessary tendentious jab. The time past for sermons—for what earthly reason? I suppose that we’re much too far gone to have any use for the moral depth of the Anglican divines?
I merely mean that sermons have lost their cultural prominence