Write an Essay

Tips on writing that all-important A-grade college essay

Keep your essay sentence length under control

Keep your essay sentence length under control

Sentence length is crucial to good essay writing. Almost everything written by good writers has an average sentence length between 15 and 20 words. This does not mean writing every sentence the same length. Good writers naturally vary the length and rhythm of their sentences. They balance longer sentences with shorter ones, but they keep their average sentence length below 20 words.

Follow this advice:

keep your average sentence length between 15 to 20 words,
cut down long sentences, and
vary the length of your sentences

An average of between 15 to 20 words for essays and research papers helps produce a clear and readable style. It’s the same average as well-respected publications such as New Scientist or the Economist consistently produce. Below 15 words and there’s a danger your writing will become too choppy and disjointed. As you go above the 20-word average, your document becomes more difficult to read. An average sentence length of 25 words is far too high.

Here’s an example of a 102-word paragraph with an average sentence length 34 words.

Make sure you do not allow long sentences — over 40 words — to creep into your writing style. Most academic writing contains too many long, even mammoth sentences. Faced with long sentences, readers often give up halfway through or forget the start of the sentence by the time they reach the end. The more words in a sentence, the harder it becomes to understand. By comparison, it’s difficult to write an unclear sentence if it is short. Edit long sentences by cutting out wasted words or by breaking them into two or more shorter sentences.

Finally, you need to vary your sentences. An sentence length average of 18 words is fine, but if 90 percent of your sentences are 16, 17, 18 or 19 words long, your style will lack variety and interest. You should balance longer sentences, say up to 35 words with shorter sentences, some under five words, some phrased as direct questions, and still get an average sentence length of between 15 to 20 words.

Original

Redraft

At first, Einstein faced great opposition when he came up with his radical new theory because the previous laws of motion proposed by Galileo and expanded upon by Newton had remained valid for over two hundred years. By mathematically manipulating these previous laws of motion, physicists in the nineteenth century were able to explain such phenomena as the flow of the ocean, the orbits of planets around the sun, the fall of rocks, and the random behavior of molecules in gases. However, it would not be long before the cement in the foundation of Newtonian and Galilean physics would begin to crumble.

Sentence lengths: 37, 44, 21 = 102,
Average = 34

Einstein faced great opposition with his radical theory. By mathematically manipulating these laws of motion, nineteenth-century physicists explained the flow of the ocean, the orbits of planets around the sun, the fall of rocks, and the random behavior of molecules in gases. The previous laws of motion, proposed by Galileo and expanded by Newton had remained valid for over two hundred years. However, soon the cement in the foundation of Newtonian and Galilean physics would crumble.

Sentence length: 8, 34, 20, 14 = 76,
Average = 19