{"id":23387,"date":"2020-03-16T03:09:01","date_gmt":"2020-03-16T07:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/?page_id=23387"},"modified":"2024-01-01T08:10:06","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T12:10:06","slug":"how-to-write-a-simple-sentence","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/writing-tips\/what-is-readability\/ideal-sentence-length\/how-to-write-a-simple-sentence\/","title":{"rendered":"Quotes on how to write a simple sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"

What writers and others say<\/h2>\n

\"Simple

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\u201cIt is too simple to say (Churchill\u2019s) leadership lay in his oratory. President Warren Harding was an orator, but his bloviations were an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea.<\/h5>\n
\u201cChurchill\u2019s speeches were packed with meat; flunking Latin at school, he got into his bones the essential structure of the ordinary English sentence. He knew people would not march behind a subordinate clause.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Harold Evans reviewing His Finest Hour<\/em>\u00a0for The New York Times Book Review<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cLanguage is more like mathematics than magic. It is a program code, for the computer called the mind, and its sequencing is not arbitrary at all. The choice and flow of words is guided by a complex, interlocking system of straightforward principles. While experts may snarl at one another over fine points, most of composition is ruled by the iron hand of grammar, usage, fine-scale structure, rhythm and the other laws of polish.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Jon Franklin, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and creative nonfiction guru<\/h6>\n
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\u201cWriting simply means no dependence clauses, no dangling things, no flashbacks, and keeping the subject near the predicate. We throw in as many fresh words as we can get away with.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Theodore Giesel, aka Dr. Seuss<\/h6>\n
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\u201cIf we journalists are poets at heart (just ask any of us), why can\u2019t we hear the non-poetry of a 19-word dependent clause.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Bob Levey, \u201chometown columnist\u201d for the Washington Post<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cRemember, English is a left-leaning language.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Joe Marren, journalism professor at Buffalo State College<\/h6>\n
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\u201cA sentence should read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen,\u00a0could have drawn a furrow\u00a0deep and straight to the end.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Henry David Thoreau, American author<\/h6>\n
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\u201cSimplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: \u2018In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.\u2019\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Kurt Vonnegut, American novelist<\/h6>\n
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\u201cI write as straight as I can, just as I walk as straight as I can, because that is the best way to get there.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 H.G. Wells, English author<\/h6>\n
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\u201cThe longer and more complex a sentence, the harder it is for readers to understand any single portion of it.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 authors of A Plain English Handbook<\/em><\/h6>\n
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