What is the urge to write shorter sentences? Short sentences are akin to verbose code in a language like Java. Every new sentence you write must include the essential components of a sentence, the skeleton, for it to be grammatically correct or in Java:
public static void method1(String[] args)
public static void method2(String[] args)
public static void method3(String[] args)
This is wasted effort that could have been saved if one was to simply reuse the same sentence to add more nuances to it. After all human languages are extremely powerful and the mere fact that it is possible to compose complex sentences is a sign that some found them more advantageous. An average German sentence is probably 2 or 3 times longer than an English one, I think this has more to do with the users of the language than the language itself, if true it means we can make English pack more punch we just have to change our perspective. I love minimalistic code but it doesn't mean code that doesn't do much, minimalism means packing as much into as little as possible, the final result after adding all sentences will be significantly shorter compared to if single-purpose-shorter sentences were used.
It's also the same type of religiosity with unit testing and TDD that turns codebases into monstrosities and shift focus away from understanding to mere correctness. Non-nuanced sentences in the form of tweets and their corrosive impact on culture and communication are probably another adverse side effect of this devoutness to shorter sentences.
I wouldn't typically nitpick grammar on this site, but I believe you're trying to demonstrate a point and I want to refute it.
>> An average German sentence is probably 2 or 3 times longer than an English one, I think this has more to do with the users of the language than the language itself, if true it means we can make English pack more punch we just have to change our perspective.
Grammatically speaking, this should be three separate sentences. Your commas should be full stops because they represent three separate thoughts. You could connect them with 'and', but I'd suggest most native speakers would find this unpleasant to read.
I don't want to make it sound like I'm not a fan of long sentences - I think fiction writing benefits from a varied cadence. For business writing, however, I think short- or medium-sized sentences are less intrusive to the average reader.
I suspect most non-social-media writing more often suffers from longer, more complex sentences than those too short. The programing analogy might be cyclomatic complexity and separation of concerns. Examples abound of functions with overloaded conditionals, long parameter lists and other smells that might it difficult to reason about the operation of such a function. On the other-hand, you do see the overzealous craft trivial functions that should just be inlined in the few places they are used.
Clarity, for both prose and code, involves finding the right tradeoffs and abstraction boundaries.
What is the urge to write shorter sentences? Short sentences are akin to verbose code in a language like Java. Every new sentence you write must include the essential components of a sentence, the skeleton, for it to be grammatically correct or in Java:
This is wasted effort that could have been saved if one was to simply reuse the same sentence to add more nuances to it. After all human languages are extremely powerful and the mere fact that it is possible to compose complex sentences is a sign that some found them more advantageous. An average German sentence is probably 2 or 3 times longer than an English one, I think this has more to do with the users of the language than the language itself, if true it means we can make English pack more punch we just have to change our perspective. I love minimalistic code but it doesn't mean code that doesn't do much, minimalism means packing as much into as little as possible, the final result after adding all sentences will be significantly shorter compared to if single-purpose-shorter sentences were used.It's also the same type of religiosity with unit testing and TDD that turns codebases into monstrosities and shift focus away from understanding to mere correctness. Non-nuanced sentences in the form of tweets and their corrosive impact on culture and communication are probably another adverse side effect of this devoutness to shorter sentences.