Sanli
25 April 2008
Short or long sentences
Tags: Article composition, writing guidelinesPosted in Getting published
There are a couple of different opinions about the length of sentences in a scientific article. A scientific argument should be precise. It usually contains many technical terms that must be well-defined, thus should be described verbally. Descriptive phrases or sentences need to be linked somehow to the central message of the paragraph, which can be an idea, a claim, a result or a fact.
I have encountered two different guidelines for constructing paragraphs. The “survival guide for scientists” insists on short sentences. On the contrary, “academic writing for graduate students” insists on the “Flow: moving from one statement in a text to the next” and provides us with a full table of linking words and phrases that can be used for introducing clauses and phrases; it means making sentences longer.
In a discussion with a colleague, he suggested another available guideline. The suggestion was to combine short and long sentences, using the contrast for emphasizing the important message that is expressed in a single short sentence.
I am confused and I cannot choose which one is better. I wish I could find out the one that is preferred by most of the readers.
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28 Apr 2008 16:02, Ronald Snijder
As far as I am concerned: try to use short sentences. Only when it is nedeed, write long ones. In my former job I worked as a civil servant; there I used long sentences if I wanted to ‘mask’ something. Short sentences = clear communication
28 Apr 2008 18:26, Ramy El-Dardiry
I think the essential criterion for judging the quality of a scientific sentence is not its length but rather its unambiguousness. Scientific sentences should be formulated as precise as possible. This unambiguousness does not only apply to a single phrase however, but also to a scientific text as a whole. It might sometime be necessary to increase the length of a single sentence to improve the unambigousness of the entire text. Aldous Huxley describes the essence of academic writing very eloquently in an interview that can be found on youtube (Interview of Aldous Huxley, A Yoan Saint: Part 1 of 2).
7 May 2008 9:41, tini_camp
I have seen so many sentences in scientific papers that were too long and for that reason too difficult.
8 May 2008 11:30, onno makor
It all depends on who you’re writing for.
The Dutch government advices that, if you’re writing for the general public, a sentence should hold on average about 10 words.
But ofcourse scientific papers don’t address the general public.
Perhaps the Flesch/Flesch–Kincaid Readability Test could be best used to calculate the average length of a sentence, depending on it’s addressed audience? (The formula as developed by Flesch is optimised for the English language)
19 Jun 2008 11:47, Rutger
Use short and long sentences, but try to keep them short.
Short sentences are easy to read, however using only short sentences will make any written text dull. Using only long sentences will make an article difficult to read.
I agree with all above that scientific papers should be formulated precisely. But you can be just as precise when cutting al long sentence in two as when it was one long sentence. Actually when your sentence contains lots of comma’s or dashes it is almost always composed of two sentences joined together.