On Short Sentences

😔 You've been taught to believe that short sentences are childish, merely a first step toward writing longer sentences.

You'd like to think your education has carried you well past short sentences.

But you've been delivered into a wilderness of false assumptions and bad habits, a desert of jargon and weak constructions, a land of linguistic barbarism, a place where it's nearly impossible to write with clarity or directness, without clichés or meaningless phrases.

True, you can sound quite grown-up, quite authoritative, in the manner of college professors and journalists and experts in every field.

But:

• How well do they write?
• How much do you enjoy reading them?

If and when you improve your writing, you'll make long sentences again, but they'll be short sentences at heart.

Sentences listening for the silence around them.

But how do even make short sentences? How short is short? How short is long?