Young writers often try to impress with big words and long sentences. The result may be impressive if the goal is to put you to sleep.
You are missing the point of writing, at least of writing that is meant to inform. You can’t inform someone who stops after the first paragraph. You will stop if the article is long and boring. Do we like listening to people who ramble on with big words?
Think of Julius Caesar’s famous phrase, which has reached us even after 2,000 years: “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
When it comes to power writing, brevity is best. The brilliant writing coach William Zinsser argued in his classic On Writing Well that there is no point in making a reader do the work. He asks us: Why use a three-syllable word when a two-syllable word works just as well?
So why cram 50 words into a sentence when just a few are enough to convey the information? If more words are needed, you can start a new sentence.
Help the readers.
When people read, they often do so out loud in their heads. When you cram 50 words into a sentence, you don’t give them time to breathe. The period does that. I would argue that the period is the most underrated punctuation mark. It tells the reader: Stop and process this thought.
Let’s look at another way to start this article:
Young writers often try to impress with big words and long sentences. This may produce an impressive result, but it also makes the writer sleepy and misses the point of writing, at least when it comes to writing that is intended to inform.
Not so snappy.
The power of brevity is useful for those who write in their second language. I tried to learn Spanish as a second language alongside my native English, but I had a hard time mastering the 16 tenses. I forgot that in my own language you can only focus on two tenses: present and past. People who converse in Spanish also often use only past and present tenses.
Look at the verbs I’ve used in this article. I’ve avoided gerunds – verbs that end in -ing. I’ve avoided past participles and perfect tenses (you know, verbs that follow has, have, or had, like “has written”). I’m also avoiding adverbs – words in the English language that end in -ly.
Less is more.
Two paragraphs above, I first added the phrase “particularly useful” but left out the word “particularly.” That’s the adverb, and adverbs don’t often improve the verb. The fewer words I use, the easier I make it for someone to read what I’ve written.
You won’t do that in literary writing. But that’s because literary writing has a different goal. The literary author wants you to read what he has written. But he also wants something more – perhaps to create something beautiful, or a story that will shock, disturb, or confuse you. He doesn’t always want the reading to be easy. He might want to get you to work.
Consider the first line of a famous novel:
“Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank with nothing to do: once or twice she had looked into the book her sister was reading, but there were neither pictures nor conversations in it. ‘And what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations?'”
This 57-word sentence begins the classic novel Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll packed this sentence with gerunds, infinitives, compound tenses, past participles, and passive forms.
But he wanted his readers to take their time. You don’t rush through the book. It confuses the reader and makes them laugh. That’s the fun of it.
