Keep sentences short

Summary: Make your sentences concise. Aim for 15 to 25 words.

Long sentences can be hard to read, so keep them short. Aim for:

• an average sentence length of 15 words
• sentences no longer than 25 words.

Fixing long sentences

Three ways to shorten sentences are:

• remove unnecessary words
• add a full stop where you see punctuation (commas, semi-colons, colons, brackets, em-dashes), or a conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
• rewrite to phrase the sentence more concisely.

Don’t waste words. Even short sentences can include words that don’t need to be there. Go to write concisely

Resources

• Readability statistics in MS Word show average sentence length
• Count Wordsworth (average sentence calculator)