23
Vary Your Sentence Length

Sentences that are all one length can be monotonous. They have no variety, and are often boring. They tend to make the reader fall asleep. You want to avoid writing sentences like this. If you do, you run the risk of being dull.

Can you see this from the examples we just used?

The liveliest e-mails include a variety of sentence lengths. Some are short; some are longer. By varying the length of your e-mail sentences, you create a more interesting tempo and add impact to your message. Here are a few things to keep in mind when crafting your sentences.

Short sentences are more expressive and energetic in nature than long sentences, and work well for presenting concise thoughts or ideas. For example:

• The network is down.

• We closed the deal.

• Way to go!

• He said what?

Long sentences are better suited to explore possibilities, elaborate on ideas, or present involved concepts. For example:

• We find that most companies understand the importance of customer satisfaction surveys, yet only a few know how to really leverage the information to increase both sales and loyalty.

• Although we all know the problems that can arise when customers call in and cannot reach the person that can best solve their problems, we haven’t ever been willing to allocate resources to solving this service failure.

Exercise

The following paragraph contains sentences of approximately the same length. Notice how the words deliver the message, but the tempo is flat:

“As you all know, yesterday the network went down for two hours. The cause of the problem was a server that went off-line. We are trying to discover why the failsafe back-ups did not switch in. I will let you know more information as I get it. Thank you all for doing whatever was needed to handle the situation.”

Please rewrite the paragraph, using varying sentence lengths.

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How does your rewrite compare with the following sample?

“As you all know, yesterday the network was off-line for two hours because a server went down. The backup didn’t switch in. We are trying to discover why the failure occurred, and I will let you know as soon as I know. You all did a remarkable job. Thank you all for doing whatever it took.”