Better writing: Rhythm

Short sentences are usually, but not always, best. Newspaper journalists are taught to only communicate one single thought in a sentence. That way the meaning is more likely to be clear to the reader.

The Economist Style Guide makes a joke of this in its guide to punctuation:

Use plenty. They keep sentences short. This helps the reader.

Much as I love short sentences, using too many of them makes text boring and difficult to read. They can also be uneconomical. As Harold Evans points out in Newsman’s English:

Often it is wasteful to introduce a subject and predicate for each idea. The subordinate clause in a complex sentence can state relations more precisely and more economically than can a strong of simple sentences or compound sentences joined by and, but, so, etc.

There’s another reason to use complex sentences in your writing. They add rhythm. Use too many short sentences and your copy will have a staccato rhythm that will annoy and distract readers. Use too many long sentences and your writing will lack pace, you may even lull your readers to sleep.

A similar logic can be applied to paragraphs. View them as bundles of closely related thoughts.

There’s no hard and fast rule about the best length for paragraphs. It’s a good idea to minimize the number of one sentence paragraphs you write. As with sentences, vary the pace. Too many consecutive short paragraphs is annoying. Too many long ones is hard work for the reader. Both approaches are difficult to read.

Above all else use paragraphs to make your writing easier to read.

This is part of a series of Better Writing columns. Read the others:

• Better writing: Companies are singular
• Better writing: The inverted pyramid
• Better writing: Keep it simple
• Better writing: And
• Better writing: Go easy on the adjectives
• Better writing: Capital letters

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