Maximum two ideas per sentence

1. Ideally, each sentence should contain only one piece of information and
should be no more than about 25 words long.

2. The occasional long sentence is fi ne, provided that: (1) it is easy to
understand, (2) dividing it into shorter sentences would be dif fi cult to
achieve.

Using complex sentences in your writing is fine, but too many very long sentences can be exhausting for your reader. If you have too many very long sentences in your writing, your reader will struggle to remember what you're trying to say and to engage with your ideas. Break your very long sentences into shorter sentences to help your reader.

You can shorten long sentences by:

1. Separating independent clauses
Look for conjunctions like "and" in your sentences and see if the part after the "and" could be written as an individual sentence.

2. Eliminating extra clauses
Remove sentence starts such as "in my opinion", "as a matter of fact", "as far as I am concerned". They add nothing to your sentence.

3. Cutting out glue words
Glue words are the 200 or so most common words in the English language. They're grammatically correct, but often make your sentences unnecessarily long.

4. Look for repetition and redundancy
Have you called something a "true fact"? Find places where you've repeated the same idea three times or used unnecessary words that you can easily remove.

Here's an example of a sentence with a lot of unnecessary (glue ) words:

• It doesn't matter what kind of coffee I buy, where it's from, or if it's organic or not, I need to have cream because I really don't like how the bitterness makes me feel.

This sentence is long and complicated. There are lots of extra words and thoughts in it. Here's what it looks like rewritten:

• I add cream to my coffee because the bitter taste makes me feel unwell.