# Long Sentences = Bad Writing? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 13, 2010, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642 "2010-09-13T19:56:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/21 "2010-09-13T23:37:57Z")
Here is all of art. Use it as a cheat sheet next time you’re in a discussion. > [@](#): > > Everything that’s good is good. Everything that’s not good is not good. ---
**Author:** ![PaperBlob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/58956e/32.png) [@PaperBlob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PaperBlob)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/22 "2010-09-14T00:04:39Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > No, long sentences are not bad writing per se. Current style leans toward short sentences, but there are plenty of great writers who write long sentences (e.g., Dickens, Faulkner). You forgot **Sampiro**. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Chicken\_Fingers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Chicken\_Fingers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chicken_Fingers)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/23 "2010-09-14T00:36:53Z")
I don’t like Cormac McCarthy’s style. Give me Proust’s pages-long, exquisitely turned sentences any day. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/24 "2010-09-14T00:47:26Z")
> [@Stealth\_Potato](#): > > Ahh, I thought I recognized the name Cormac McCarthy. His writing was “featured” in B. R. Myers’s [Reader’s Manifesto](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/07/a-reader-apos-s-manifesto/2270/). (Which I highly recommend, BTW; it’s interesting, informative, _and_ a fun read. :D) > > Long sentences can be brilliantly written, as others have said, but styles along the lines of McCarthy’s are mostly just affected nonsense that doesn’t work so well if you actually _read_ it. Myers says of McCarthy’s technique that it’s “meant to bully readers into thinking that the author’s mind operates on a plane higher than their own—a plane where it isn’t ridiculous to eulogize the shifts in a horse’s bowels.” > > I like the cut of Myers’s jib. I read that manifesto years ago, and it irritated the shit out of me then. There are plenty of modern authors I don’t like, but his reasons for disliking them struck me as more pretentious than the most pretentious modern author–sort of a hipster lit-grad pose struck with a PBR in hand. But then again, I really like Cormac McCarthy, and he’s one of very few mimetic fiction authors I like. His prose style works very well for me. ---
**Author:** ![Stealth\_Potato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Stealth\_Potato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stealth_Potato)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/25 "2010-09-14T01:45:31Z")
Well, I don’t know; it’s easy to characterize a criticism as “pretentious” without addressing its substance. But then again, in fairness, Myers is doing something like that too: by deriding authors as pretentious he’s making gratuitous assumptions about their intent, which at any rate isn’t the job of a literary critic. (Though I still happen to agree with nearly all of what he said.) But buried under Myers’s scorn for the scorners are a lot of very good points. For whatever _reason_ the authors did it, awkward, plodding, repetitive prose, sloppy jumbles of inappropriate metaphors, and unclear language are still just that. Just as the author’s pretentiousness isn’t really a factor in objective quality, “It was meant to be bad” isn’t really an excuse. 😉 Note also that Myers isn’t just saying that the authors are pretentious hacks; he’s also picking on some contemporary critics who seem to enjoy calling things “evocative” that are merely effusive, “edgy” that are trite, and “intellectual” that clearly aren’t. That said, good reading is very much in the eye of the, uh, reader. If you enjoy something, that’s what matters; and anybody who derides somebody else just for enjoying something that they don’t enjoy themselves is being a twit. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![SantaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/da6949/32.png) [@SantaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SantaMan)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/26 "2010-09-14T01:51:14Z")
tl;dnr 😉 ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/27 "2010-09-14T03:25:11Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > Okay, so everything from “when the painted ponies” onward is description of the dream of the past, which is a simile for the ancient road before him, which takes on these characteristics when the shadows are long, the hour he’d choose to… what? > > Isn’t this an exceptionally long sentence _fragment?_ I was wondering the same thing, and whether or not McCarthy writes in fragments or if this was an abridged quote. Technically it could be forced into being a sentence, but it seems unlikely : “At the hour, he’d choose.” ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/28 "2010-09-14T04:08:47Z")
It’s possible to write well with long sentences. But, in my opinion, it takes more skill than writing well with short sentences. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/29 "2010-09-14T04:13:29Z")
Upon review, I see I may have created the false impression that I think writers who use long sentences are more talented than writers who use short sentences. I do not believe this. I think that a writer of sufficient talent can write well using sentences of whatever length he chooses. The point I was trying to make was that a writer of average skill might be able to write well using short sentences but fail if he tried to use longer ones. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/30 "2010-09-14T11:29:13Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I think that a writer of sufficient talent can write well using sentences of whatever length he chooses. So - Size doesn’t matter? It ain’t the length, it’s the notion? Sorry; I’ll leave now. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/31 "2010-09-14T12:33:09Z")
Please tell me that McCarthy’s writing does include more punctuation than what the OP copied. Pretty please? The problem with those particular sentences is not that they’re long, it’s that they’re disjointed. On the other hand, **pseudotriton** ’s sentence would make the harshest grammar teacher ever go weak at the knees: bravissimo! ---
**Author:** ![Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ee7513/32.png) [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kim_o_the_Concrete_Jungle)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/32 "2010-09-14T12:42:29Z")
There is no general rule. Good English prose will use long, short, complex, compound, and simple sentences freely to create the desired effect. Choosing between long and short is usually a matter of pacing. Several long sentences in a row will slow the pace of a passage, creating the sense that we are pausing to look at some of the finer details. Several short sentences, in contrast, will quicken the pace, implying movement or action. However, in the general course of things, you will want to use all the different types of sentences together. That’s lively prose. That’s how you keep people awake. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/33 "2010-09-14T14:08:17Z")
I was struck by how much sentence #1 resembles sentence #2;I mean, McCarthy seems to be saying that the main character hears the wind and imagines he sees the long-gone indian warriors. He (McCarthy) spins this into two impossibly long sentences-maybe he was paid by the word (like Dickens)? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/34 "2010-09-14T15:33:25Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Please tell me that McCarthy’s writing does include more punctuation than what the OP copied. Pretty please? The problem with those particular sentences is not that they’re long, it’s that they’re disjointed. Those sentences have no punctuation because they are written deliberately to create an effect. McCarthy wants the reader to be swept into the past of the imagination and feel the elements as Indians did. The form of the sentences is very deliberately chosen to achieve that affect. It is experience by immersion. Now it’s true that McCarthy uses that technique throughout the book, even in the current scenes, but not in every sentence. Many sentences are quite ordinary and short. He’s not writing haphazardly. He has a style and he will inflict it on you if you don’t happen to like that style, but most literary writers have a distinct style. Long sentences = bad writing? What if someone asked short sentences = bad writing? or medium-length sentences = bad writing? You would roll your eyes or do something less polite. Style is something that people like or tend to find unreadable. A lot of people don’t like Hemingway’s style, which is the opposite of McCarthy’s. Do you work with the writer and try to understand why that style is being used and what affect it has on you as a reader of this particular story? You don’t have to, but that’s part of the compact that literary writing makes that commercial writing doesn’t. Even if you make the effort, you may find that it yields no reward. I thought the actual sentence by sentence writing in McCarthy’s _The Road_ to be vomitous. I never finished it. The sentences quoted from _All the Pretty Horses_ are far superior. That happens. I like much of Hemingway, but not everything he ever wrote. That’s why I wrote what I did before. Style is meaningless in and of itself. Any style can work; any style can fail. A genius can break any rule and succeed. A bad writer can write perfectly formed sentences and fail. If you approach art from that angle you will get nothing from it ever. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/35 "2010-09-14T15:34:39Z")
As an English teacher, I recommend that my students write sentences of between 8 and 12 words. Then I point out that the previous sentence has 17 words in it. They draw their own conclusions. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/36 "2010-09-14T15:52:50Z")
> [@Stealth\_Potato](#): > > I’m with you there. Tolkien wrote a very straightforward, unaffected English which he nonetheless gave a distinctive style. More importantly, he seemed to know what writing was _for_ and he had the skill to make long passages _lucid_. I’m also sure Tolkien’s mastery of “it’s” and “its” was sufficient that this is an introduced error, whether in transcription into this thread or through the work of some editor. [QUOTE=JRRT] biding it’s time, secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/37 "2010-09-14T20:07:13Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > > [@Stealth\_Potato](#): > > > > I’m with you there. Tolkien wrote a very straightforward, unaffected English which he nonetheless gave a distinctive style. More importantly, he seemed to know what writing was _for_ and he had the skill to make long passages _lucid_. > > I’m also sure Tolkien’s mastery of “it’s” and “its” was sufficient that this is an introduced error, whether in transcription into this thread or through the work of some editor. > > [QUOTE=JRRT] > biding it’s time, secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength. [/QUOTE] Quite likely, I copy and pasted that from some quotation site I googled up, so it’s third hand at least. Notice there’s no comma between “armoury” and “prison” either. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/38 "2010-09-15T03:42:11Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > “At the hour he’d always choose when the shadows were long and the ancient road was shaped before him in the rose and canted life like a dream of the past when the painted ponies and the riders of that lost nation came out of the north with their faces chalked and their long hair plaited and each armed for war which was their life and the children and the women and women with children at their breasts all of them pledged in blood and redeemable in blood only” I’m going to try to punctuate that: > [@](#): > > At the hour he’d always choose, when the shadows were long and the ancient road was shaped before him in the rose and canted life like a dream of the past: when the painted ponies and the riders of that lost nation came out of the north with their faces chalked and their long hair plaited, [del]and[/del] each armed for war which was their life, and the children and the women and [the] women with children at their breasts–all of them pledged in blood and redeemable in blood only. You know, this is just rambling. I thought punctuation would save it, but, actually, nothing has been said. The guy starts the sentence like he’s trying to say something, but then never gets back to the main part of the sentence, instead getting caught up in the overuse of imagery. This is, honestly, a beginning writer’s mistake. There’s no way a good writer would get caught up in writing so that they forget to actually complete the sentence. This is not only a sentence fragment, but one that makes no sense. The only way I could say this is possibly good writing is if it is connected to a previous sentence. For example, “He set out on the long journey at 3:00. At the hour he’d always choose…” And, even then, without the punctuation, it sounds like the breathless teenager who refuses to pause even slightly. So I seriously doubt such a previous sentence existed. ETA: I forgot my original point! That, if I saw such a sentence without the punctuation I added, I would be very inclined to skip over it. And if I have to skip too many sentences, I won’t finish the book. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/39 "2010-09-15T13:41:02Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > > [@ralph124c](#): > > > > “At the hour he’d always choose when the shadows were long and the ancient road was shaped before him in the rose and canted life like a dream of the past when the painted ponies and the riders of that lost nation came out of the north with their faces chalked and their long hair plaited and each armed for war which was their life and the children and the women and women with children at their breasts all of them pledged in blood and redeemable in blood only” > > I’m going to try to punctuate that: > > > [@](#): > > > > At the hour he’d always choose, when the shadows were long and the ancient road was shaped before him in the rose and canted life like a dream of the past: when the painted ponies and the riders of that lost nation came out of the north with their faces chalked and their long hair plaited, [del]and[/del] each armed for war which was their life, and the children and the women and [the] women with children at their breasts–all of them pledged in blood and redeemable in blood only. > > You know, this is just rambling. I thought punctuation would save it, but, actually, nothing has been said. The guy starts the sentence like he’s trying to say something, but then never gets back to the main part of the sentence, instead getting caught up in the overuse of imagery. > > This is, honestly, a beginning writer’s mistake. There’s no way a good writer would get caught up in writing so that they forget to actually complete the sentence. This is not only a sentence fragment, but one that makes no sense. > > The only way I could say this is possibly good writing is if it is connected to a previous sentence. For example, “He set out on the long journey at 3:00. At the hour he’d always choose…” And, even then, without the punctuation, it sounds like the breathless teenager who refuses to pause even slightly. So I seriously doubt such a previous sentence existed. > > ETA: I forgot my original point! That, if I saw such a sentence without the punctuation I added, I would be very inclined to skip over it. And if I have to skip too many sentences, I won’t finish the book. You are right-I think McCarthy was on a bender when he wrote this. If you read further on, there is the main character’s bizarre encounter with Alejandra’s aunt-who tells him why he cannot continue to see her..it’s a rambling discourse upon poor Mexico, a woman’s honor, her brother’s murder, their possible jewish ancestry..blah, blah…blah..a big rambling mess that makes no sense at all. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642/40 "2010-09-15T14:17:58Z")
Obligatory Henry James Story: > [@](#): > > According to Wharton’s 1934 autobiography, the two authors got themselves lost while rattling around the village of Windsor in her motor car, and James asked an old man on the road for directions. > > ``` > “My good man, if you’ll be good enough to come here, please; a little nearer–so,” and as the old man came up: “My friend, to put it to you in two words, this lady and I have just arrived here from Slough; that is to say, to be more strictly accurate, we have recently passed through Slough on our way here, having actually motored to Windsor from Rye, which was our point of departure; and the darkness having overtaken us, we should be much obliged if you would tell us where we now are in relation, say, to the High Street, which, as you of course know, leads to the Castle, after leaving on the left hand the turn down to the railway station.” > > I was not surprised to have this extraordinary appeal met by silence, and a dazed expression on the old wrinkled face at the window; nor to have James go on: “In short” (his invariable prelude to a fresh series of explanatory ramifications), “in short, my good man, what I want to put to you in a word is this: supposing we have already (as I have reason to think we have) driven past the turn down to the railway station (which in that case, by the way, would probably not have been on our left hand, but on our right) where are we now in relation to…” > > “Oh, please,” I interrupted, feeling myself utterly unable to sit through another parenthesis, “do ask him where the King’s Road is.” > > “Ah–? The King’s Road? Just so! Quite right! Can you, as a matter of fact, my good man, tell us where, in relation to our present position, the King’s Road exactly is?” > > “Ye’re in it,” said the aged face at the window. > > ``` [http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/index.php/2007/07/31/dont-let-henry-james-ask-for-directions/](http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/index.php/2007/07/31/dont-let-henry-james-ask-for-directions/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-sentences-bad-writing/553642.md?page=3)