The Writing Brain
University of Exeter

Fixing Over-Long Sentences

You don’t want to have too many short sentences; you don’t want to have too many long sentences.  You don’t want to confuse the reader, but you don’t want to bore the reader.  You want to be clear, but you don’t want to be too brief; you want to be elegant, but you don’t want to be too long.  So now you don’t want to write any sentence, for fear it might be too long. Or too short.  This section is here to help.

An essay is like a relationship: you don’t want it to get too boring, but at the same time you don’t want it to be totally unpredictable.  In essay terms, this means you must vary your sentence size and structure, while making clear the links between words, sentences, paragraphs, and ideas.

First, very long sentences.

Whilst his reference to the ‘amalgamation’ of blacks suggests inherent racism, it can be argued that this was a political tactic to build up to egalitarianism gradually, as this would  have been ridiculed in a 19th-century environment.[1]

It is a useful rule of thumb that if a sentence is longer than 2.5 lines in an undergraduate essay, you should try to divide it in two.  The best way to do this is by cutting it at a natural pause (a natural pause is a place where you pause to draw breath, or a place where your intonation goes down).

[1] You now have enough experience to know that this sentence could be made smaller simply by changing some constructions.  For example purposes, though, we’ll do very little of that.

In this sentence there are three natural pauses, but because one comes after a dependent clause (the one that begins with “While”), you can’t cut there.  You can cut in front of the “as,” if you make changes.  So we have two possible cutting spots.

Whilst his reference to the ‘amalgamation’ of blacks suggests inherent racism, it can be argued that this was a political tactic to build up to egalitarianism gradually, as this would have been ridiculed in a 19th-century environment.

Let’s say we split at the first possible place.

Whilst his reference to the “amalgamation” of blacks suggests inherent racism, it can be argued that this was a political tactic.

This is a strong, clear statement.  You can see that because you’ve let it stand alone, it’s gained much more power than it had as part of the longer sentence. Excellent.  Now we’re left with a

fragment that we have to turn into a sentence in its own right:

to (It) build (t)up to egalitarianism gradually, as this (immediate equality) would have been ridiculed in a 19th century environment.

And there you are with two nice, much stronger, much clearer sentences:

Whilst his reference to the “amalgamation” of blacks suggests inherent racism, it can be argued that this was a political tactic. It built up to egalitarianism gradually, as immediate equality would have been ridiculed in a 19th-century environment.

Now you make two small changes to enhance cleanliness, and you’re ready to go:

Whilst his reference to the “amalgamation” of blacks suggests inherent racism, it (one can) can be argued (argue) that this was a political tactic. It built up to egalitarianism gradually, as immediate equality would have been ridiculed in a 19th-century environment (19th century).

Two nice, clean, clear, strong sentences.

Practical Solutions:

Look for “, and” in a long sentence. Try cutting the sentence in half there.

It may be that you have, not an over-long sentence, but a comma splice. Check before you cut.

Similarly, many long sentences are long simply because they contain many long words. Before you divide a sentence, see if you can reduce it by moving elements around and substituting simpler/clearer words.

Be Aware of These:

Not all long sentences are bad; the 2.5 line rule is not iron-clad. Sometimes long sentences are necessary and/or graceful.  What counts is how effectively they convey your meaning.

If you can’t understand it, it’s certain that your reader won’t. Reading sentences longer than 2.5 lines aloud will help you spot the ones you need to cut.

Punctuation can do a great deal to create pauses in a long sentence. Learn to love your commas, colons, and semi-colons!

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