Back to Style this week!
We are going to spend a little time going over sentences this week, and the way I like to start with this is to just focus on how long and short your sentences tend to be.
First, Open up your Literacy Narrative first draft (or, if you want, your revision in-progress).
Second, let’s see your sentence length average and variance.
You can use Microsoft Word to do this.
a. Go to File>Options (make sure you use scroll bar all the way to right to scroll to bottom)>Proofing.
b. Under “When correcting spelling…”, check the box labeled “Show readability statistics.”
c. After that, go to “Review” on top menu bar and click “Spelling & Grammar” on far right.
d. Some box (or a few) might come up about conciseness or something else, click “Ignore once.” Then another box will appear called “Readability Statistics.” Look at “Averages” and you will find your sentence average, as well as average sentence per paragraph and average character length for words.
If you don’t have Microsoft Word you can use analyzemywriting.com and paste your writing there and click “Analyze Text!”. Toward bottom, the last chart “Sentence Length” gives you the mean and median for your sentences (as well as a distribution of all of your sentence according to number of words).
Third, choose two different paragraphs and note the length of each sentence (in Word, use cursor to highlight sentence and in bottom left corner it tells you how long sentence is; in Google Docs, highlight sentence and then click Tools>Word Count). Write down each length somewhere so you don’t forget (e.g., use comment function). Think about these questions:
- Do you note any patterns in length? (e.g., do you tend, in both paragraphs, to start with really long sentences followed by a short sentence? Or do you tend to have really short sentences of about equal length throughout?) Is there a rhetorical effect here? What? How does it make that effect?
- Is there a time where these patterns are violated? Is there a rhetorical effect there? What?
- To see the distribution of sentence lengths, you can use analyzemywriting.com (follow instructions from previous page). This can help you see bigger picture of whether you tend to always have roughly the same length of sentence or not.
In a comment below, name one thing that stood out to you about your writing based on this analysis.
After you comment below, click the button below to continue.
One thing that really stood out to me in my writing was that each paragraph had around the same length for each sentence. Each sentence was pretty even and this was suprising, while writing it seems that every sentence may be unique, but when analyzing it, I was expecting much more variety but it is shocking to see the data.
The sentences I analyzed were usually the length of my average and some (1 every 3) were smaller. I usually do smaller sentences when I’m going to formulate a question or just clarify something, but I would say that ,mostly, my sentence length stick to my given average (27 words per sentence). Although according to the Analysis page distribution, my sentence length is very varied.
One things that stood out to me in the analysis was that it seems like whenever I am talking about myself, my sentences tend to be shorter (15-22 words). When I am telling a story about something else, my sentences tend to be longer (20-30 words).
I noticed how all of my paragraphs are roughly half a page in length. I give an introduction to what I will speak about in the beginning of almost every paragraph, then go more in depth later by giving examples and asking questions. I tend to have a decent amount of longer sentences, although here and there my sentences are a bit shorter and more brief. There is a lot of rhetorical effect throughout this piece. I am constantly asking questions, giving my opinion, and trying to challenge the readers thoughts on my writing. I have my own views of the world and do my best to expose others to those views in my writing, so they can understand where I’m coming from and the basis for my arguments.
In my draft, I noticed that I tend to start with short sentences followed by longer sentences. However, my paragraphs are almost the same length because they all range between 172 words and 225 words. The rhetorical effect here is that I want to hook the reader into the story at the beginning of the paragraph before providing the rest of the details. My decision to make the paragraphs similar in length is also meant to make the whole story appear organized and inviting to the reader.
Many things stood out to me was that when I was looking at the sentence length in my paragraphs. But what I realized the most was that in the beginning of my essay my sentences were shorty and a little more choppier. While towards the end my sentences were longer and flowed a bit better.
One thing that stood out to me is that I did not use any exclamation marks. It may seem like it doesn’t matter but I’ve been struggling to try and add some personality to my writing and I think that adding some exclamation marks could be a great way to do that.
My sentence length is very consistent, though it might be a product of my editing. I try to avoid sentences that are too long or too short if it’s not necessary.
One thing I notice in my writing is that my body paragraphs are twice the size of both my intro and conclusion paragraphs. I also realized that when I talk about myself and what I have experienced, the sentences tend to be much longer.
It looks like my main body paragraphs are much larger than my introduction and conclusion. My average sentence word count was 18.4 and the median was 16. There were a few times when I would repeat myself for emphasis on things that were important which would make some sentences much shorter.
I think my sentence count stood out to me the most. I definitely expected to see more sentences given that my draft was 4 pages, but it was only 38 sentences. I don’t know exactly how to feel about it though.
One thing that stood out to me is that my sentences really varied in length. That gave my writing a high readibilty score. I was not expecting this because when I was writing a lot of the sentences seemed repetitive.