In class an interesting debate came up about the use of long sentences. What sort of effect do long sentences have? Are they ever really useful? Some points were brought up, such as "Long sentences loose the reader's attention quickly" or "They should be placed at the beginning to introduce all the topics in a linked together order." It is definitely hard to pay attention to long sentences. If you need to immediately relay a point, they are not the way to go. However, they are extremely useful in linking a lot of ideas together. I don't know if that particularly connotes any place to use them within a paragraph, though. Also, most articles could be summed up in a few short sentences. All you need are subjects and verbs, really. But then you loose the poetry of language, and it's definitely hard to make "There is a cat. The cat is fat. It is a fat cat." flow freely. I suppose one must assess when beauty or clarity is necessary. Or maybe the fault is in our own reading. Maybe we need to pay more attention to punctuation.
This was a pretty wishy-washy assessment. As someone who uses long sentences, I should probably advocate for the more strongly.
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