Writing Tip of the Week

Aloha,

Here’s your writing tip of the week.

According to research by the American Press Institute, the longer sentences are, the less readers understand. I haven’t managed to find the original source of this research, but it was apparently based on studies of 410 newspapers, and the researchers correlated the average number of words in a sentence with reader comprehension.

The study showed:

When the average sentence length was fewer than eight words, readers understood 100 percent of the story.
With 9–14 word sentences, readers could understand more than 90 percent of the information.
With 43-word sentences, comprehension dropped to less than 10 percent.

Pity this information didn’t include the comprehension rate for sentences of 15–30 words.

See my web page under classes & seminars for new class schedule starting January 2 & 3. – https://jasmyneconsulting.com

Have a Wonderful New Year!

Aloha,

Jasmyne

Enjoy!