1JunLength matters

I’m always being taken to task about the length of my sentences.  People can’t cope with sentences more than 10 words long.  Or with more than one idea in them.  Or with too many long words.  Or so I’m told.

Rubbish!

I don’t believe people’s attention-spans really are shorter now than they were 50 years ago, or even 10.  I think that, if they’re interested in the subject, readers can cope with several sub-clauses, even a few digressions, without losing their places or going off to do something else completely.  (See – you made it this far, didn’t you?)  If you write (and read) as though you were talking (or being talked to), all of that becomes irrelevant because people don’t talk in short, simple sentences; they talk in paragraphs, mostly hoping-they-won’t-be-interrupted-before-they-can-finish-what-they’re-trying-to-say-and-have-to-start-listening-to-the-other-person-in-the-conversation.  Apart from the taciturn types who can hardly get a word out with any degree of comfort, of course.

The  reason this subject arose is the book I’m reading, Rose Macaulay’s The Towers of Trebizond.  Those of you who’ve read it will remember the gloriously discursive style of the writing, mirroring the heroine-and-narrator’s thoughts.  If you haven’t yet read it, do, especially if you know anything about the Anglican church (it’s not about that, but it does poke some wonderful gentle fun at it).  It’s very amusing, though I have to put it down after about an hour as the mixture’s pretty rich: one can have too much of a good thing at one sitting, even chocolate mousse.  But I digress….

The problem with long sentences is not that people can’t read them; it’s that many authors can’t write them.  If you’re going to produce a long sentence you need to be more Proust or Trollope (Anthony, not Joanna) than Nietzsche: use words that people recognise, in contexts where they make sense.  Then you can let your stream of consciousness range about like a mountain stream forging around and through the rocks and tree-roots in its way, as it leaps and tumbles down the hill to the river below. 

Or words to that effect.  (There is also a place for short sentences.  And yes, I know that the five words at the beginning of this paragraph don’t constitute a proper sentence.)

Don’t let the thought police dumb you down.  Long live the long sentence - written and spoken!