The Decrease in Length of English Sentences: A Historical Overview
When reading historical texts, one is bound to encounter sentences that are abnormally long, especially when compared to sentences written today. These sentences are often abstruse to the average modern reader, but there are historical explanations of this trend. The length of the English sentence has decreased dramatically over the past 500 years. One of the causes of this phenomenon is the universalizing of education that occurred during these centuries. This resulted in a decrease in the quality of education due to increased strain on its infrastructure. A second factor is the continually shortening attention span of audiences, initially brought about by the development of television, radio, and movies, and later the Internet.
These mediums are able to deliver more information with greater efficiency, all at a lower cost than ever before. Subsequently, attention has become an increasingly scarce commodity, encouraging writers to reduce the length of their sentences in order to seize it. One major consequence of a shorter, simpler, sentence structure is a stifling of critical analysis of the status quo, which could result in social regress or stagnation.
The universalization of education over the past few centuries has produced an increase in literacy rates. According to Roser and Ortiz-Ospina, the literacy rate of the U.K. in 1475 was 5%, and in 2003, it was 99%. Thanks to this boom in education, the lower classes, who lacked access in the past could now learn to read and write. The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the 1440s led to greater distribution of the Bible, which up to that point was available only in Latin and Greek (the languages of the educated at the time). Soon after, the Bible was translated into “the vernacular “ — languages of the masses, such as English, German. The Protestant Reformation, which began in 1517 and then raged throughout Europe, encouraged people to interpret the Bible for themselves instead of relying on clergy and the Pope. The printing press became essential for this new theology. In 1526, William Tyndale published the first Bible in English, in England. By 1532, King Henry VIII had split England from the Catholic Church, established the Church of England, and in 1539, allowed the dissemination of Tyndale’s Bible (“William Tyndale”).
As a result of these historical developments, according to Creson, the male literacy rate in England rose from 5% to 40% within a century. During the 19th century, there was a large increase in the philanthropic establishment of free schools in the U.K. which culminated in The Elementary Education Act of 1870. This act required government-financed school boards to be created where there were not enough schools (“The 1870 Education Act”). This century also saw the steepest increase in literacy rates since 1475. Alongside these changes, we also see that the average length of the English sentence declined from 63.02 words in 1500 to 14.4 words in 1950 (Medium).
To put these statistics into perspective, consider the following two excerpts. The first is the opening paragraph of George Washington’s first inaugural address, and the second is the beginning of Barack Obama’s first inaugural address.
Washington (1789):
“Among the vicissitudes incident to life, no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the fourteenth day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my Country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years: a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me, by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my Country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens, a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with [despondency], one, who, inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpractised in the duties of civil administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions, all I dare aver, [is that], it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance, by which it might be affected. All I dare hope, is, that, if in executing this task I have been too much swayed by a grateful remembrance of former instances, or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent proof, of the confidence of my fellow-citizens; and have thence too little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination for the weighty and untried cares before me; my error will be palliated by the motives which misled me, and its consequences be judged by my Country, with some share of the partiality in which they originated.” (Washington)
Obama (2009):
“My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you've bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.
I thank President Bush for his service to our nation as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.
Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms.” (Obama)
Believe it or not, each excerpt is five sentences long. Washington uses considerably longer sentence structuring and more “sophisticated” vocabulary in his speech than Obama had. Delivered before the invention of the radio, Washington’s speech was heard only by those who could attend the speech in person. This means that there were likely more elites in the audience than average citizens, thereby prompting him to speak in a more formal register. In contrast, Obama’s speech was broadcast through nearly every radio, television, and smartphone in the U.S. and most of the developed world.
Writers tailor their writing to their audience. When literacy was concentrated among the upper class, writers appealed to their refined, educated, and aristocratic tastes by writing more elaborate sentences. As the access to formal education spread and more people learned to read, the audience for written works widened. However, in the U.K., the overall quality of education decreased due to the greater strain placed on existing educational infrastructure; more students needed to be educated, so more teachers needed to be hired. To satisfy the increased demand for instructors, it is reasonable to speculate that the standards for hiring an instructor might have been lowered. In response to lower-quality education becoming more widespread, authors began reducing the length of their sentences to ensure that their work would be better understood (DuBay).
Arising more recently, another impetus for the decrease in the length of sentences is the decline in the average attention span. This occurrence can be demonstrated by the decreasing length of the average political sound bite, starting in the second half of the 20th century. Politicians have needed to make their statements “punchier” and more memorable, or else have the press cut out their message. The 1988 U.S. presidential candidate Michael Dukakis complained that “If you couldn’t say it in less than 10 seconds, it wasn’t heard because it wasn’t aired.” (Fehrman). Fehrman writes that the length of the average U.S. political sound bite in 1968 was 43 seconds; in 2011, it was just nine seconds. The reduction in attention span was initially brought about by the development of television, radio, and movies. These new forms of media elevated the significance of the spoken word, over the written word in public discourse, and diverted attention from books, newspapers, and periodicals. To compete for increasingly scarce attention, writers were once again forced to condense their writing into shorter sentences.
The development of the World Wide Web in the 1990s intensified this phenomenon; never before in human history have such masses of information been available to so many people, and for so low a cost (Morris et al.). To compete, writers in recent times have shortened sentences even more. Furthermore, Twitter imposes a 280-character limit on Tweets, and TikTok imposes a 100-character limit on captions. (Until November 2017, Twitter's limit for Tweets had been 140 characters) (Perez). Being such an influential platform, those who wish to post on Twitter will conform to its limit and mercilessly chop their sentences. With journalists, politicians, and other public figures posting on Twitter, the site has reached tremendous cultural relevance over the past decade, granting the character limit linguistic significance.
With industrial expansion into consumer markets beginning in the mid-19th century, the U.S., marketing assumed an influential role in society (Nakamura et al. 1). More people were hired to work in marketing and more advertisements appeared in mass media. Copywriters were hired in greater numbers to write advertising campaign slogans, descriptions, and other material to promote sales. The marketers, understanding the importance of short and simple messages, pressured copywriters to condense their messages as much as possible. Here is yet another factor contributing to the reduction in the length of sentences: the profit motive. To increase sales, copywriters write shorter and “punchier” advertising messages (Nakamura et al. 6). In fact, these copywriters are also encouraged to reduce the length of the words themselves, which explains terms such as “lite” and “drive-thru.” Everything must be short. Even a few extra seconds of thinking may turn a potential customer elsewhere.
In his seminal novel 1984, George Orwell predicted the creation of a language, which he called “Newspeak.” Designed by government bureaucrats, this language would restrict free thought by severely limiting vocabulary and therefore, human creativity. If Orwell’s prediction is to be fulfilled, and the trend of decreasing sentence length due to shortened attention spans continues, then free expression will become harder to achieve since nuanced ideas can often require longer, more descriptive sentences. Critical analysis of the status quo will be stifled by the requirement of keeping one’s sentences short, lest one lose the attention of readers. Interestingly, Orwell did not predict that humanity would fall into the trap of using “Newspeak” unwittingly. Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, anticipates that people will not protest tyranny and oppression from the outside, as Orwell predicts, but will actually embrace it and enjoy their enslavement. Perhaps this vision more accurately depicts the present.
A counterargument to the idea that longer sentences are usually more meaningful is that by using shorter sentences, writers can mobilize a greater number of people to support a particular cause. For example, some will maintain that the works of many prominent thinkers, such as Karl Marx, Peter Kropotkin, and Rosa Luxemburg, are inaccessible to today’s average reader due to their ornate sentence structure, let alone the prerequisite knowledge they demand. However, how else could these ground-breaking thinkers communicate their complex ideas, in simpler terms, without losing the nuance that makes their work so significant?
The data showing that the length of English sentences has decreased is indicative of the creation of new genres in the 18th century, which generally use shorter sentences. For example, stories involving action, chaos, and turmoil often use shorter sentences in order to create a fast-paced tone. These genres appear more recently in literary history. The first published novel in England is generally considered to be Robinson Crusoe, first published in 1719 (“British Literature Wiki”). It is a relatively action-filled story, chronicling Crusoe’s many adventures and, as such, could be viewed as an example of the new literary forms at the time. Previously, works were more conservative, religious in nature, and took on an analytical role (Harper), which could explain the longer sentences.
Another explanation for the use of longer sentences in older works is that many of them were actually listened to much more often than modern readers expect. Reading texts aloud was a practice that continued into the Victorian era (Lai-Ming Ho). For example, Lai-Ming Ho writes that Charles Dickens often read his works at home, such as to his daughters, and on stage before large audiences. Since punctuation is not as important in speech as in writing, authors had greater liberty to have more expansive and freely flowing sentences, with “punctuation” being provided by natural pauses in delivery. A person listening to a speech does not need to know exactly where one sentence ends and the next begins or whether a pause represents a comma or a semicolon. Furthermore, a considerable proportion of his listeners were illiterate and did not know what punctuation was (Lai-Ming Ho). Hauser writes that it was a common practice for English illiterates to pay people who could read to have the next installment of Dickens read aloud to them.
Scarcity produces power. Through the consumption of movies, television, radio, and the Internet, attention has become a scarce resource, granting audiences greater power over authors than ever before in terms of how they want information delivered. If the people want shorter sentences and colloquial vocabulary, then that is what they will get — and some will say, it is what they deserve.
By Edward Karak
Illustrations were done in collaboration with the New Media Artspace at Baruch College. The New Media Artspace is a teaching exhibition space in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Baruch College, CUNY. Housed in the Newman Library, the New Media Artspace showcases curated experimental media and interdisciplinary artworks by international artists, students, alumni, and faculty. Special thanks to docent Bryan Campaña for creating artwork for this piece.
Check the New Media Artspace out at http://www.newmediartspace.info/