why are long sentences difficult to read? course hero

Do long sentences make it harder to read?

Oct 29, 2012 · Chapter 3 Construction of Clear Sentences and Paragraphs True/False Questions 1. Because long sentences are hard to understand, the business writer should make no sentence longer than 25 words. Answer: False Page: 49 Difficulty: Easy Rationale: Long sentences can be clear and can be used with reason. They should be

How do you make a long sentence easy to read?

ANSWER: Editing for clarity involves breaking up overly long sentences and rewriting sentences that contain hedging (words like may and seems). It also requires imposing parallelism, or using the same grammatical pattern to express two or more similar ideas. Correcting dangling modifiers is another necessary step, along with rewording long noun sequences.

Why is the length of a sentence important?

Jul 12, 2019 · In general, the thought about long sentences is that they make the text harder to read. Even so, there are plenty of examples in literature of rebels breaking the rule concerning how long a sentence should be. Some authors are skilled enough where the long sentences they’ve written work and are easy to follow.

How hard is it to understand the first two sentences?

Very long sentences are often overstuffed with glue words. These extra words make the sentence difficult to read and needlessly complex. If you reduce the number of glue words in your sentences, you can make your sentences shorter and easier to understand.

Who wrote the longest sentence in the history of literature?

Often cited for being the longest sentence ever written is by author James Joyce. In his novel, Ulysses, the character Molly Bloom has a monologue that goes on for 36 pages and has a total of 3,687-words. The only reason that a sentence this long works is because it is a monologue.

How many sentences are in the assignment?

The Assignment is a novella published in 1986 by Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The novella is published in 24 parts as 24 sentences. The inspiration to break the grammar rules came from listening to Glenn Gould performing Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier I, which itself is 24 movements.

How many words are in the essay "Being Ill"?

The essay On Being Ill by Virginia Woolf takes you on a 183-word ride about the spiritual change illness has on us. The weight of abstractions doesn’t usually work in long sentences. But in Woolf’s case, it sets a clear path to the most critical phrase at the very end. It is a sentence that literature should embrace, not fear.

Who wrote the assignment?

The Assignment by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The Assignment is a novella published in 1986 by Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The novella is published in 24 parts as 24 sentences. The inspiration to break the grammar rules came from listening to Glenn Gould performing Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier I, which itself is 24 movements.

Who is Marcus Conway?

The novel follows Marcus Conway, a deceased middle-aged man who returns on All Souls Day to reminisce about the past.

Who wrote Solar Bones?

Solar Bones by Mike McCormack. In more recent literature, Irish fiction author Mike McCormack published a novel in 2016 that is one sentence long. The novel follows Marcus Conway, a deceased middle-aged man who returns on All Souls Day to reminisce about the past.

Why are long sentences bad?

Long sentences get a bad rap. Because many writers abuse long sentences, cramming too many thoughts into each sentence, muddling up their message and leaving readers confused. So, the main trick to composing a beautiful long sentence is to communicate only one idea with clarity.

What is a long sentence?

A long sentence, in which the writer delays the core to the middle of the sentence or in which the core is broken up so readers have to remember how the sentence started, is more difficult to read. This version highlights the core: A long sentence, in which the writer delays the core to the middle of the sentence or in which ...

Overloading sentences with information in brackets

We sometimes try to make our sentences convey too much information by embedding extra information in brackets. Take this sentence from a Westpac creditcard brochure about international travel insurance.

Overloading the subject with too many words

Sentences that have a lengthy subject (nominal group or noun phrase) are difficult to read.

When does a sentence have a passive voice?

sentence has a passive voice when the agent (i.e., cause of action ) and the recipient are reversed (Owens, 2016). Examine this example, based on a Hungarian folktale writ-ten by Ian Creanga (Institutul Cultural Roman, 2009), who described how “the bear was tricked by the fox.” Note that the bear is the recipient of the action and the fox is the agent. This sentence would be easier for many students to process if it had been written in the active form, with the first noun as the agent of the action: “The fox tricked the bear.”A primary reason students are confused by passive sen-tences is overreliance on a word-order strategy (Owens, 2016; Paul & Norbury, 2012; Scott, 2009). To successfully comprehend these structures, students need to know how small function words with minimal lexical meaning, such as “was” and “by,” operate in a sentence with a passive verb construction. Otherwise, they might fail to recognize the passive voice and incorrectly infer an active construction with the first noun serving as the agent of the action. Thus, “the bear [recipient of action] was tricked by the fox [agent]” might be misinterpreted as meaning that the bear (agent) tricked the fox (recipient).

What is a special education teacher working with a fourth grade student with impaired reading comprehension?

special education teacher is working with a fourth grade student with impaired reading comprehension. The student has difficulty comprehending complex sentences with adverbial clauses, and her writing samples are characterized by unelaborated sentences with a paucity of subordinating conjunctions.

What is a relative clause?

relative clause is a dependent clause that acts as an adjec-tive by providing information about the subject or object of an independent clause (Justice & Ezell, 2002). Relative clauses are often introduced by a relative pronoun, such as that, who, or which. Consider this example from A Drop of Water: A Book of Science and Wonder (Wick, 1997, p. 28): “But in the cold air, water molecules that cling to particles form tiny ice crystals.” In this sentence, the relative clause “that cling to particles” modifies or describes the subject “water molecules.” Also note that this relative clause is embedded within the center of the independent clause, “water molecules . . . form tiny ice crystals,” thus splitting the independent clause into two distal structures. This is an important observation because the greater the distance between related parts of a sentence, the more difficult the sentence will be to process (Owens, 2016).

What is special education teacher?

special education teacher provides reading instruction to a small group of sixth grade students with learning disabilities. The students in this group have demonstrated difficulties comprehending sentences with passive verbs during reading activities. After modeling how to respond to questions about active and passive sentences, the teacher provides each student with opportunities for guided practice.

What is a phrase in a sentence?

When you’re reading a sentence, you don’t understand it word by word, but rather phrase by phrase. Phrases are groups of words that can be bundled together, and they’re related by the rules of grammar. A noun phrase will include nouns and adjectives, and a verb phrase will include a verb and a noun, for example.

What is the special property of human language?

Human languages have the special property of being recombinant. This means a sentence isn’t woven like a scarf, where if you want to add more detail you have to add it at the end.

What is a noun phrase?

One type of phrase is a noun phrase, the object of the sentence. In “This sentence is an example,” the noun phrase is “this sentence.”. For the second, it’s “this boring sentence.”. Once a noun phrase is fully assembled, it can be packaged up and properly understood by the rest of the brain. During the time you’re reading the sentence, however, ...

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