The Writing Brain
University of Exeter

Fixing Overly Short Sentences

But what about short sentences? Although they’re much easier than long sentences, they have their difficulty: many of them in a row is a recipe for dullness. Also, they are jarring: Your
reader. Reads. Like this.

Jane Eyre is Charlotte Bronte’s most successful novel. It was published in 1847.  It tells the story of a young girl’s journey into womanhood.  She encounters many trials and tribulations on the way there.  These include a cruel school and a crazy wife.  In the end, though, she ends up married and happy.

This is actually a fairly good summary of Jane Eyre. Unfortunately, it’s also really boring. It’s also halting, and unvaried, two other risks of short sentence clusters. Flow and a snake-like sinuousness are more pleasing to the reader, so that’s what you want to produce.

There are two ways to smooth choppy sentences:  Connect and Combine.

If you choose to connect, you will need to use transition words.  When my father tells me I need a transition word, he then goes on to list them all for me, just in case.  I’m not going to do that, but I will give you the most helpful:

Thus

Indeed

Moreover

Consequently

Furthermore

Nonetheless

Therefore

In fact

Nevertheless

You will have noticed that “however” is not on this list.  That’s because it shouldn’t go at the beginning of a sentence.   You will also notice that there are no prepositions on this list.  Preposition present difficulties as connectors.  “But” is becoming widely accepted, so that’s okay, but “And” you really should try to use no more than once per essay:  it’s a very strong

word at the start of a sentence, so use it only when you truly want emphasis.

You will also have noticed that “In fact” is, in fact, a phrase.  This is because you can use transition phrases as well as words.  For instance:

Despite this,

While this may be true,

As a result,

In light of this,

Given that this is the case,

It would thus be safe to say,

If you connect, the sentences above would look like this:

Jane Eyre, published in 1847, is Charlotte Bronte’s most successful novel. It tells the story of a young girl’s journey into womanhood, a process that involves many trials and tribulations.  For instance, she is enrolled in a cruel school and, later, encounters the crazy wife of her beloved.

Despite these setbacks, she ends up married and happy.

That’s much better.

If you want to combine, you will use most of the punctuation marks we’ve already considered.

The result might look like this.

Jane Eyre (1847) is Charlotte Bronte’s most successful novel. It tells the story of a young girl’s journey into womanhood, a process involving many trials and tribulations: she is enrolled in a cruel school and, later, encounters the crazy wife of her beloved; nonetheless, she ends up married and happy.

That’s also much better.

But the truth is that, as both these revisions show, neither connecting nor combining is fully successful on its own.  Your best solution to short sentences is to connect and combine:

Jane Eyre, published in 1847, is Charlotte Bronte’s most successful novel. It tells the story of a young girl’s journey into womanhood, a process involving many trials and tribulations: she is enrolled in a cruel school and, later, encounters the crazy wife of her beloved. Despite these setbacks, she ends up married and happy.

Long sentences and short sentences each have their problem:  more than two short sentences in a row sounds choppy; long sentences, even just one, can get confusing or vague.  Therefore, the most effective kind of writing combines short and long sentences.  Remember, though, that short sentences will always be more immediate and make a stronger impact than long sentences.  For this reason, use them when you have something important to say, but try to use truly short ones only when you really have something important to say:

In 1347, Florence was a thriving merchant city, bustling with citizens who negotiated, argued, bargained, and went about their business in a whirring tumble of humanity.  In 1348, the plague entered Italy via Naples, and slowly Florence was transformed.  Her houses were marked to show where the plague had visited; healthy neighbours closed their doors to those who might be sick, her ghostly streets were populated only by corpses and the cries of the doomed: between May 1348 and December 1348, 70% of the Florentine population died of the plague. This was the apocalypse.

The whole paragraph is strong, but it’s the final, short, sentence that has maximum impact.

Practical Solutions:

Just as you can divide long sentences in half at the “, and,” you can join short sentences by hooking two together with a comma and a preposition.

Instead of a comma and a preposition, you can use a semi-colon, or even a colon (see the sections on those punctuation marks, above).

If a sentence is short but you really feel it loses effect or sense when you attach it to another, consider “softening” it by using an introductory word or phrase, or putting one at its end.

If all else fails, there’s nothing wrong with a good old funnel introduction.

Be Aware of These:

Remember that a combination of short and long sentences is best. You want to create a flow that has high and lows, so the reader doesn’t get bored.

Many short sentences in a row are almost always an indication that a writer is nervous: she’s just glad she has anything to say at all.  Varying sentence structure creates a sense in the reader’s mind that you are confident.

Long-ish, long-ish , short is fine – great, in fact. Short, long-ish, long-ish, can also work.  But Short, long, long does not work.

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