What are the elements of a clear, clean sentence?
How many words should a readable sentence have?
When can sentences run long, and why?
Sentence Length
For clearest reading, a sentence in English should be no more than 15 words. Let’s look at different sentence lengths.
As you look at them:
- Notice when your eye begins to skim over the words.
- Notice when your mind gets tired of trying to absorb the meaning.
Test sentences:
- Jesus wept. (2)
2. But it is not as though the word of God has failed. (12)
3. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. (15)
4. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. (27)
5. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (60)
Noun, Verb
The two-word sentence shows us the core parts of an idea: Someone or something doing an action. Jesus is the someone, and he is weeping.
In the second sentence, “the word of God” is the subject, and the verb is “failed.” There’s a “not” earlier in the sentence which modifies the verb to “has not failed.”
Check your sentences to be sure there’s an acting thing or person. Check that there’s an action.
Noun, Verb, Clause
If you’re a typical reader, your eyes and brain will tell you the difference between reading 15 words and even 27 words. What makes it bearable is clauses.
In the 15-word example, there’s a comma in the middle of the sentence. It has one main idea and one short contrasting point.
The only reason we can get through the 27-word example is because it’s a list. The list has commas between its items. Here’s the big key, though: Each of those items could form a single sentence with the subject and its action. The items are clauses.
How Clauses Work
The subject, or topic, of the sentence is “the earth.” The subject’s action is “brought forth.” Now, watch this:
- The earth brought forth vegetation.
- The earth brought forth plants yielding seed according to their own kinds.
- The earth brought forth trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind.
This sentence is only this long because it’s actually shorter than repeating the noun-verb foundation three times. This ordered-list approach occurs in many languages.
What a Long Sentence Should Be
Now for our fifth sentence, totalling 60 words. Let’s find the subject: It’s “he.” The action is “caused to be.”
There are multiple dependent clauses in this sentence, which makes it very difficult to read in English. How do we know what they are?
We apply the Standalone Sentence Test, same as with the Genesis passage.
- “According to his great mercy.” What is according to his great mercy? This is not a sentence by itself. It’s not the main action and doesn’t present the subject.
- “He has caused us to be born again.” Bingo. That’s a sentence in itself.
- “to a living hope”—who or what is going to a living hope? This is a dependent clause. It can’t exist without the main part of the sentence.
- “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”—who or what is going through…? This has the same dependency on the main part of the sentence.
- “to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you”
We’re going to pause here, because after this comes a whole new twist in the wording.
How did I know where to break up these parts of the sentence?
Because each one can go with “He has caused us to be born again.”
Try it. That’s the Standalone Sentence Test. Find the verb (action that’s happening), then find the subject (thing or person doing the action). This is the core of the sentence.
Find which parts each go with the core. If your long sentence is made up of parts that could each go with the core action, you can let it go longer than 15 words.
If not, then you’re mashing together separate sentences and using commas instead of periods.
Peter almost does this in the tail end of his sentence, but not quite.
“He has caused us to be born again, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
This is very powerful writing. The object (thing or person being acted upon) is “us.” But it does not exclude “you,” the reader. This closing clause weaves “us” and “you” together as inheritors of something eternal and pure.
On the surface, it looks like this writing is all over the place. In English, it is fairly difficult to follow. However, its connected ideas are very precise and strung together with great thoughtfulness. They still work across translation and time.
In spite of that sophistication, it’s still very hard to read!
Self-Evaluation
Have you constructed your longest sentences carefully, ensuring that each phrase hangs on the main idea?
Do your ideas become clearer if you write them in no more than 15 words?
Is it extremely hard to write your idea in 15 words? This is a clue that the words are not specific enough. The idea may not have fully formed for you yet. Keep trying.
Words: 948 | Time to read: 5 minutes | Time to write: 2.5 hours