Short Sentences for Him

1914

Writer Gives Good Advice to His Fellows in the Following Simple Words

Writers who wish to impart to their productions power and pungency, who wish to keep the reader's attention upon the tiptoe of activity, who desire to escape the imputation of pedantry and who seek to surcharge their sentiments with sparkle and spirit will do well to bear in mind constantly that long, lingering sentences, unduly overburdened with an abundance of phrases, clauses and parenthetical observations of a more or less digressive character, are apt to be tiresome to the reader, especially if the subject matter be at all profound or ponderous, to place an undue strain upon his powers of concentration and to leave him with a confused concept of the ideas which the writer apparently has been at great pains to concentrate; while short, snappy sentences, on the other hand, with the frequent recurrence of subject and predicate, thus recalling and emphasizing the idea to be expressed as the development of the thought proceeds, like numerous signposts upon an untraveled road, these frequent breaks having the effect of taking a new hold upon the reader's attention, oases in the desert of words, as it were, will be found to be much more effective, much more conducive to clarify and far better calculated to preserve the contact, the wireless connection, so to speak, between the writer and the reader; provided, however, and it is always very easy to err through a too strict and literal application of a general rule, that the sentences are not so short as to give a jerky, choppy and sketchy effect and to scatter the reader's attention so often as to send him wool-gathering completely. — Ellis O. Jones in Life.