Is writing very long sentences which waste much of the reader's time reading it and understanding it's meaning a bad thing, or is it good? [closed]

Question

When I write, I often use very long sentences, such as 50-word-long sentences like these, instead of multiple short sentences because I forget to end my sentence as I have so much to say so I don't think about keeping my sentences short to make the sentence's reader understand it more easily, and I also add many words that I do not need to them, which makes them even longer, but they're still grammatically correct, so there's no problems and I shouldn't lose points whenever I use them in an essay or some other text which I give to the English teacher, or another teacher such as the french teacher or even the math teacher, and they should be understood easily by anyone, including people whose first language is not English, so I was wondering if this is a bad thing or not, because if it is, in which case I would like an explanation why, I would like to stop using sentences like these because others won't understand them.

So, should I stop?

Answer 1

It is arrogant and immature to deliberately or carelessly violate other people's (perfectly reasonable) expectation that what you write in an essay should, to the best of your ability, be:

• Easy to follow

• Concise

• Factually accurate

• Logical and well-argued

• Grammatical and reasonably free from spelling errors

Besides the improvements in both content and presentation that will flow from adopting an altogether less childish attitude, I highly recommend carefully rereading your essays before you submit them. This will enable you to identify and correct any problems with grammar, spelling, coherence of argumentation and stylistic awkwardness. (If you're in doubt about how something flows, read it aloud to help you decide.)

Your teachers will appreciate your effort; your thinking and reasoning skills will improve; you will achieve higher marks; and ultimately, you are likely to have far more choices in your progression through the education system, followed by better career and earning opportunities, once you start your life as an adult.

Answer 2

Generally speaking, shorter is better. But there are many exceptions, so, as the saying goes, "It depends"...on the sort of writing you're doing. Very long periodic sentences used to be fashionable. Look at the opening sentence of the US Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

That's a single long sentence written in a formal style common in the late 18th century. I have put the subject and verb of the sentence in boldface. If we were writing such a declaration today, I doubt that the introductory sentence would be that long. We might say something like "These are the causes and reasons why we, the people of the United States in Congress assembled, declare that the political bands which have tied us to Great Britain should be, and are hereby, dissolved." Still a fairly long sentence, but much shorter than the one actually used.

So my advice is, make your sentences as long as they need to be, but not longer; and do your best to be clear.

Answer 3

Leaving aside grammatical issues, a sentence should contain a single idea. The OP's sentence contains a string of ideas, and that is what makes it so unpleasant to read. It is not so much a sentence as a poorly constructed and punctuated paragraph meaning that the reader has to work to extract meaning from it.