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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24267
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24267
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

This is one of the many cases in which advice about writing is misstated. Long sentences are not bad. Convoluted sentences are bad. A sentence can be long without being convoluted. A sentence can be quite short and still be convoluted.

However:

- Convoluted sentence do tend to be long.
- A greater percentage of long sentences are convoluted than short sentences. 
- The process of fixing a convoluted sentence will often result in multiple short sentences being created. 
- Length is easier to quantify than how convoluted a sentence is. 

All of which makes it easier to say, "avoid long sentences" than "avoid convoluted sentences".

People often prefer hearing this advice as well because it may be difficult to tell if your sentence is convoluted, but it is easy to tell if it is long.

Still, the advice is wrong. Being convoluted is the sin, not being long. If your thought is convoluted, you need to untangle the thought. Merely introducing more periods into the mix just turns a convoluted sentence into a convoluted paragraph.

On the other hand, some thoughts are better and more elegantly expressed with a single long sentence than by many small ones.

Original score: 2