Choppy Sentences

Choppy Sentences and Sentence Variety

Effective writing uses a variety of sentence structures to convey its message. Writers add variety to their writing by establishing patterns and then breaking those patterns. The patterns create expectation and certainty; the variations create surprise and discovery.

Accordingly, readers quickly lose interest in a long passage comprised of only simple sentences. When simple sentences are written one after another with no variation in the pattern, the writing becomes monotonous and boring. It is like listening to the same beat in a song over and over and over again. Here is an example of choppy writing caused by too many simple sentences in a row:

: I was restless. I walked out of my house. I walked down the block. I turned left at the corner. I went to the grocery. I walked into the grocery. I bought some stale cheese. I walked home and ate the stale cheese.

In this example, it is clear that the repetition of the simple sentences and the repetition of the words make the passage sound disjointed, broken--choppy. Hence, writing that is "too choppy," as the phrase goes, indicates that the writer is relying too heavily on a single type of sentence--namely, the simple sentence.

Use Commas to Combine Simple Sentences

To remedy this problem, and to keep their readers interested, writers use commas to combine simple sentences to create more complex and varied sentence patterns. When writers use commas to combine simple sentences, they create sentence patterns based on coordination and subordination. For instance, here is how commas might be used to combine the simple sentences in the preceding example:

: I was restless so I walked out of my house and down the block. When I reached the corner I turned left and walked to the grocery store. At the grocery store I bought some stale cheese. I walked home and ate the stinky cheese.

Notice that in the first sentence commas are used to create a compound sentence that uses coordination; and in the second and third sentences, commas are used to create complex sentences that use subordination. The fourth sentence is the only simple sentence.

	[ HOWL ]	[ Table of Contents ]	[ HWC Home ]	[ Hours ]	[ Hotlinks ]
William Rainey Harper College, 1200 West Algonquin Rd., Palatine, IL, USA, 60067-7398