Playground

Sentence lengths.

Each sentence is a dot, placed by its word count. If the dots form a straight line, every sentence is the same length.

123 words · 11 sentences

Short sentences are easy to write.
Long ones are not.
A long sentence has to carry the reader across three or four ideas without dropping any of them, and most writers, when they try, drop at least one.
So most advice says keep them short.
I think that advice is half right.
Short sentences are clear, but a page of them sounds like someone tapping a table.
You need a few long ones for the ear to relax.
The trick is seeing where you are.
Reading your own draft, you hear what you meant, not what you wrote.
Sorting the sentences by length strips the meaning out and leaves the shape.
If every dot lands in the same column, you have your answer.

“Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm.” — Virginia Woolf