Sentence Variety

Let’s consider sentence length. This is a short sentence. Here is a second one. And here is one more. These all have five words. You should read them aloud. See how they all sound. Probably it will get monotonous. We’ll end the paragraph now.

The above is example of why writers should mix up sentence length. Although teachers often emphasize the importance of short sentences, because they tend to be clear and easy to write, it would be a mistake to think that every sentence should, or must, be short.

In academic writing, some sentences are likely to be long. A good thesis statement should provide enough information to give the reader a preview of the paper, for example. Also, when you connect multiple ideas together, you might end up with a long sentence. In fiction writing, authors sometimes use unexpectedly short or long sentences to emphasize key points, and the contrast catches the reader’s attention. Below are some particularly dramatic examples.

Example: The War Prayer

This is the opening of The War Prayer. The first sentence contains eight words, and the second one comes in at well over one hundred.

It was a time of great and exalting excitement.

The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.

Mark Twain (1907)

Example: On the Rainy River

This is the beginning of On the Rainy River. The short sentences frame what comes before or after them.

It was a time of great and exalting excitement.

The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.

Word Choice

Along with the word count, it’s also a good idea to vary how your sentences start. When proofreading, if you find that several sentences in a paragraph begin with the same word or words (for example, The, This, It, There is), perhaps you should revise some of them. This is not to say that all repetition is bad; sometimes it is reasonable to reuse words — especially key words and precise terms — and parallelism is a powerful writing technique. So, when you notice repetition in your own work, pause for a minute and decide if you are happy with it.

References

O’Brien, T. (1990). The Things They Carried. Houghton Mifflin.
Strategies for Variation. (2024). Purdue Online Writing Lab. Retrieved 2026.
Sentence Variety. (2015). Writing for Success. University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing.