Write Right - Defence Academy of the United Kingdom

The sentence and the paragraphShort sentences are easier to write and to understand than long ones.Remember your objective when writing is to make it as easy as possiblefor your reader to get your message. Don't overload your writing withconditions, exceptions and consequences - these can swamp yourmeaning and bore your reader. Poor writing often results from sentencesbeing too long. A sensible average might be between 15 and 20 words.Vary the length of your sentences. Short punchy sentences can be astiring to read as long and verbose ones. Several consecutive sentenceswith the same number of words can be monotonous.A formal sentence should consist of at least a subject and a verb, butneed contain no more, so that Sue laughed is a grammatically correctsentence.The paragraph has 2 roles:To help the reader follow your argument by indicating where you aremoving on from one point to another.To break up the appearance of the page and make it look morereadable (long paragraphs discourage readers before they start).With too many paragraphs your writing will look jerky; but with too few,the reader has no breathing space.11