When writing (and ghostwriting), I was often gently scolded by a client because I was not adhering to the main rules: short sentences and no more than three per paragraph, an encouraged use of bullet points in the body of the article wherever possible, and a final run-through the Hemingway App to shave it down as tightly as possible to getting a green score and making it perfect for a fourth grader to read should a fourth grader be interested in reading blog posts about various industry topics. I understood somewhat; this was writing not for the ages, but for search engines, serving only to keep fresh content on a website selling something else.
However, doing this (to some lesser degree) in the books I was asked to write pained me.
"But this is a book," I would say. "This is actually meant to be read."
No joy. And worse, by doing this so much, it started to affect my own writing. It wasn't long before bullet points started popping up in my own work, like some weird virus that took unhatched thoughts and dropped them in a list and called it good. I try to find some middle ground, now, and depending on the type of thing I'm writing, might allow a bullet list ("how to make cookies" or God forbid "how to be a better writer backed by science"), but I'm trying to shed that indoctrination as far as doing it as the standard instead of as a natural flow of the written thing. If a short sentence pops up naturally, welcome, little fellow.
What really got me in your article was the concept of bro poetry, that way of writing Very Important Thoughts perfect for a TEDx talk in which each sentence mic-drops its way clumsily into relevance, pretending that the white space—by suggesting such great thoughts can't be allowed to be crowded out by other thoughts—isn't what's really doing all the work. The first time I saw this was several years ago, on Facebook of all places, that great purveyor of deep thoughts, and I was confused. I like poetry, and I kept reading the post over and over trying to figure out what was happening with it. Is it poetry? Is Facebook inserting paragraphs in this guy's writing? Why is he doing this? Of all the things I see in writing today, it's one of the most annoying. Some of those sentences, especially since they are so short, are lonely; they need the emotional support of the others, and it feels like I'm in some writing boudoir where the sentences aren't fully clothed; it's embarrassing for all involved.
I love everything about this response. I’ve done some ghost writing over the years; it’s enough of a challenge to get the author’s voice. But it’s worse when the author has bought into some of these rules but doesn’t know the first thing about why those rules exist or how/if they should be followed. Also “welcome, little fellow” and “writing boudoir”! Perfect.
I also love everything about the comment- and about your essay, Joel.
(sometimes I am so grateful that I am not a writer, and don't have to listen to all the advice- kill this, trim that, tighten here, polish there, don't start with a name in the first sentence of yours (yep, was just about to wake up Kafka, tell him how he screwed up in "Metamorphosis") and all this incessant buzzing )
Thanks for a great reminder. Moran’s book is wonderfully useful to me—finish the sentence in your head before sloshing words around the screen. As my favorite Roberto Bolano said, to paraphrase, ignore all the rules.
My eldest son did karate when he was young. I remember his sensei telling him at one point—this is like 16 or 17 years ago now—“the kata isn’t the move.” The point of memorizing the kata is so you can improvise. No fight follows a guidebook. Same with writing. Style guides don’t dictate narratives or how we put them together. We improvise and respond as the narrative seems to require.
Welcome advice for writers (and readers). I like this sentence in particular: Confusion comes from losing the sentence’s center of gravity. I so enjoy reading your essays. PS, despite his acclaim as a writer, I'm often lost in Faulkner's sentences, and don't get me started on Celine.
The response to Faulkner is fair. Not everybody’s cup of … bourbon. Sometimes that’s just a taste thing. Other times it’s a time of life thing. Writers that work for us in one season don’t always in the next. And writers that put us off in one season might become electric to us later. I’m finding that right now with Dostoevsky.
This was a thoroughly enjoyable read. I am forwarding the article to my high school senior students who need this advice terribly. Thanks for the wisdom in witty and winsome language.
Reading some of the posts here that are full of short, single-sentence paragraphs kind of makes me feel like I'm driving down a divided highway with a stop sign every hundred feet.
Thank you for sharing that how to write a sentence doesn't have to be formulaic to meet the minds of our times. Short or long isn't as important as the message. The reader will hang in there if the message is thought-provoking or entertaining or engaging enough to keep them in the story.
Ellroy was over on one of his novels and was told to shorten the work. He invented, as he says, “telegraph style.” But his invention went beyond the EB White advice. Another noir writer, Elmore Leonard said “eliminate all the boring parts” but that really says nothing about writing that swoons and sways.
Noir is a great example of the short-sentence convention working well, but that goes to my argument. It works because it conveys a certain feeling that crime authors are trying to evoke. The terseness propels the narrative and mimics the matter-of-factness of the detective’s own mind. Philip Marlowe has to keep his facts—the few he can gather—straight, which is tortuously difficult. But no one writes Regency romance like that because the author is going for an entirely different effect.
Great article Joel, but this Okie just can't get into Shakespeare. Give me ⚜️ Saint Benedict of Nursia, St Maximus the 🩸🗡️📚 Confessor or Vladimir Lossky 🇷🇺☦️🇫🇷🪔 anytime. (oh yeah, I prefer 🇬🇧 Chesterton over Lewis or Tolkien any day!)
I've heard that Saint Paul's opening discussion from the first Chapter of the Epistle to Ephesus is a real challenge for Translators to try and punctuate the breaks in his 📝 ❤️🔥 inspired thoughts....
Yeah, St. Paul was—I say advisedly—a clumsy writer. David Bentley Hart’s translation of Romans, for instance, leaves all the infelicitous bits untouched so the reader can experience the jarring nature of the prose first hand. Most translators smooth all that out.
It has been my experience that LLM'S accept huge long sentences in their prompts. Focusing our thoughts helps keep the bots 🤖 on the path, so they actually seem to behave better and more accurately 🤔 when the sentence is longer with qualifying statements and phrases. Extensive and specific 📝 wording keeps the Clankers from hallucinating and 🦉 drifting off. This has definitely been my personal pattern of interaction with Anthropic's free bot ~ "Claude" over the last three months. 🌐⏰💫📡 To live in interesting times....
🤓🧐 St JP-II wrote huge long cumbersome sentences, so did FA Hayek. Conversely, Papa Benedict XVI and Ludwig von Mises used much more concise sentences. The human mind is a mystery 😌 unique to each person, how we transmit our ideas and their forms, thru art, symbol, prose, hymns, poetry or deeds is a 🪞 reflection of this mystery. Grace and peace to you loved ones. Humility and Self-Knowledge are the foundations of Prayer, LOVE is the Pinnacle! ⛰️🔥🗡️🌦️🐎🪽✨ Holy Prophet of God Saint Elijah the Tishbite and 🌍🌴🌙 Saint Isidore of PELUSIUM, pray for us....
I’ve never compared Hayek and Mises at the sentence level. But I will say Mises’s “Theory and History” almost buried me. And Benedict’s writing is a joy to read.
When writing (and ghostwriting), I was often gently scolded by a client because I was not adhering to the main rules: short sentences and no more than three per paragraph, an encouraged use of bullet points in the body of the article wherever possible, and a final run-through the Hemingway App to shave it down as tightly as possible to getting a green score and making it perfect for a fourth grader to read should a fourth grader be interested in reading blog posts about various industry topics. I understood somewhat; this was writing not for the ages, but for search engines, serving only to keep fresh content on a website selling something else.
However, doing this (to some lesser degree) in the books I was asked to write pained me.
"But this is a book," I would say. "This is actually meant to be read."
No joy. And worse, by doing this so much, it started to affect my own writing. It wasn't long before bullet points started popping up in my own work, like some weird virus that took unhatched thoughts and dropped them in a list and called it good. I try to find some middle ground, now, and depending on the type of thing I'm writing, might allow a bullet list ("how to make cookies" or God forbid "how to be a better writer backed by science"), but I'm trying to shed that indoctrination as far as doing it as the standard instead of as a natural flow of the written thing. If a short sentence pops up naturally, welcome, little fellow.
What really got me in your article was the concept of bro poetry, that way of writing Very Important Thoughts perfect for a TEDx talk in which each sentence mic-drops its way clumsily into relevance, pretending that the white space—by suggesting such great thoughts can't be allowed to be crowded out by other thoughts—isn't what's really doing all the work. The first time I saw this was several years ago, on Facebook of all places, that great purveyor of deep thoughts, and I was confused. I like poetry, and I kept reading the post over and over trying to figure out what was happening with it. Is it poetry? Is Facebook inserting paragraphs in this guy's writing? Why is he doing this? Of all the things I see in writing today, it's one of the most annoying. Some of those sentences, especially since they are so short, are lonely; they need the emotional support of the others, and it feels like I'm in some writing boudoir where the sentences aren't fully clothed; it's embarrassing for all involved.
I love everything about this response. I’ve done some ghost writing over the years; it’s enough of a challenge to get the author’s voice. But it’s worse when the author has bought into some of these rules but doesn’t know the first thing about why those rules exist or how/if they should be followed. Also “welcome, little fellow” and “writing boudoir”! Perfect.
I also love everything about the comment- and about your essay, Joel.
(sometimes I am so grateful that I am not a writer, and don't have to listen to all the advice- kill this, trim that, tighten here, polish there, don't start with a name in the first sentence of yours (yep, was just about to wake up Kafka, tell him how he screwed up in "Metamorphosis") and all this incessant buzzing )
What a delightful comment
Thanks for a great reminder. Moran’s book is wonderfully useful to me—finish the sentence in your head before sloshing words around the screen. As my favorite Roberto Bolano said, to paraphrase, ignore all the rules.
My eldest son did karate when he was young. I remember his sensei telling him at one point—this is like 16 or 17 years ago now—“the kata isn’t the move.” The point of memorizing the kata is so you can improvise. No fight follows a guidebook. Same with writing. Style guides don’t dictate narratives or how we put them together. We improvise and respond as the narrative seems to require.
What a splendid essay! Thank you for your astute insights communicated eloquently.
Thank you! It was fun to write, and it’s been grating on me for years now :)
I feel like you could have sub title called this, “scuse me while I kiss the sky.”
Haha!
Welcome advice for writers (and readers). I like this sentence in particular: Confusion comes from losing the sentence’s center of gravity. I so enjoy reading your essays. PS, despite his acclaim as a writer, I'm often lost in Faulkner's sentences, and don't get me started on Celine.
The response to Faulkner is fair. Not everybody’s cup of … bourbon. Sometimes that’s just a taste thing. Other times it’s a time of life thing. Writers that work for us in one season don’t always in the next. And writers that put us off in one season might become electric to us later. I’m finding that right now with Dostoevsky.
This was a thoroughly enjoyable read. I am forwarding the article to my high school senior students who need this advice terribly. Thanks for the wisdom in witty and winsome language.
My pleasure! I hope it helps your students!
Reading some of the posts here that are full of short, single-sentence paragraphs kind of makes me feel like I'm driving down a divided highway with a stop sign every hundred feet.
Haha! So true. It complete undermines the communication. Those lines start to feel like punches after a while. Why are we punching readers?!
Your 100 % correct. A sentence should be as long as it needs to be to show its point.
Yes. It really is that simple.
Thank you for this. It has totally opened up my mind to a new way of writing. Excellent piece!
Wonderful!
!
Precisely.
Thank you for sharing that how to write a sentence doesn't have to be formulaic to meet the minds of our times. Short or long isn't as important as the message. The reader will hang in there if the message is thought-provoking or entertaining or engaging enough to keep them in the story.
Yes! The only real question is, “Is it interesting?” Interest holds attention. If that’s not the point, then what are we doing anyway?
Ellroy was over on one of his novels and was told to shorten the work. He invented, as he says, “telegraph style.” But his invention went beyond the EB White advice. Another noir writer, Elmore Leonard said “eliminate all the boring parts” but that really says nothing about writing that swoons and sways.
Noir is a great example of the short-sentence convention working well, but that goes to my argument. It works because it conveys a certain feeling that crime authors are trying to evoke. The terseness propels the narrative and mimics the matter-of-factness of the detective’s own mind. Philip Marlowe has to keep his facts—the few he can gather—straight, which is tortuously difficult. But no one writes Regency romance like that because the author is going for an entirely different effect.
Great article Joel, but this Okie just can't get into Shakespeare. Give me ⚜️ Saint Benedict of Nursia, St Maximus the 🩸🗡️📚 Confessor or Vladimir Lossky 🇷🇺☦️🇫🇷🪔 anytime. (oh yeah, I prefer 🇬🇧 Chesterton over Lewis or Tolkien any day!)
I enjoy watching Shakespeare—and listening—more than reading him. I might undertake a Shakespeare challenge at some point to see what happens :)
Large Language Models and 👨🏻🏫🪞🤔 ♥️🔔 Education in the ✍🏼 ⛪ ☦️ ⏰ Polis. Specifically written at the ninth grade level:
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/a5a770b1-36a3-4a63-ac04-cd03e9b0a51b
I've heard that Saint Paul's opening discussion from the first Chapter of the Epistle to Ephesus is a real challenge for Translators to try and punctuate the breaks in his 📝 ❤️🔥 inspired thoughts....
Yeah, St. Paul was—I say advisedly—a clumsy writer. David Bentley Hart’s translation of Romans, for instance, leaves all the infelicitous bits untouched so the reader can experience the jarring nature of the prose first hand. Most translators smooth all that out.
DBH uses way too many words for this Okie.
He’s a hard drink, as the saying goes. I find him pretty fun from time to time.
Read him from back at FIRST THINGS, bought his NT translation and passed it fwd.
It has been my experience that LLM'S accept huge long sentences in their prompts. Focusing our thoughts helps keep the bots 🤖 on the path, so they actually seem to behave better and more accurately 🤔 when the sentence is longer with qualifying statements and phrases. Extensive and specific 📝 wording keeps the Clankers from hallucinating and 🦉 drifting off. This has definitely been my personal pattern of interaction with Anthropic's free bot ~ "Claude" over the last three months. 🌐⏰💫📡 To live in interesting times....
🤓🧐 St JP-II wrote huge long cumbersome sentences, so did FA Hayek. Conversely, Papa Benedict XVI and Ludwig von Mises used much more concise sentences. The human mind is a mystery 😌 unique to each person, how we transmit our ideas and their forms, thru art, symbol, prose, hymns, poetry or deeds is a 🪞 reflection of this mystery. Grace and peace to you loved ones. Humility and Self-Knowledge are the foundations of Prayer, LOVE is the Pinnacle! ⛰️🔥🗡️🌦️🐎🪽✨ Holy Prophet of God Saint Elijah the Tishbite and 🌍🌴🌙 Saint Isidore of PELUSIUM, pray for us....
I’ve never compared Hayek and Mises at the sentence level. But I will say Mises’s “Theory and History” almost buried me. And Benedict’s writing is a joy to read.