Page 77 - English for Writing Research Papers

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You may think that writing in a simple way with short sentences is not elegant and
is superfi cial.

But the point is not whether what you write is elegant or inelegant.

The question to ask is: Is this text effective or not? Will my readers be able to under-
stand it easily?

John Kirkman is a British consultant specializing in research and training in scien-

tific and technical communication. In his book Good Style - Writing for Science and
Technology he says:

To be easy to digest, sentences must be reasonably short and not too complex. The reasons
for this are not grammatical: they are connected with the number of items of information
the reader can absorb in a single unit or ‘thought’.

In fact, whether they are Nobel Prize winners, Oxford professors, or fi rst-year uni-
versity students, all readers prefer sentences that they:

• only need to read once

• can read quickly because the sentence does not require intense concentration
• can process word by word and thus understand the build-up of the author’s
logic immediately, rather than only being able to reach their interpretation of
the whole meaning at the end of the sentence

These goals are much easier to achieve if you write short sentences. In the world of
academic writing, I think you should aim for an upper limit of around 25 words.

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Sections 4.2 – 4.7 explain why and how long sentences get created, the pros AND
cons of using short sentences for your readers, and the benefi ts of using short sen-
tences for both your readers and co-authors.

Sections 4.8 – 4.16 explain how to convert a long sentence into short sentences. For
more details see Chapter 15 in English for Research: Grammar, Usage and Style .