I'm in the midst of editing and reviewing -- for what I hope is the last time -- my book that introduces philosophy. Since it's written as an ordinary introduction (for high school and college students), one of my themes in editing has been simple, short sentences.
I've been trying to use a greater variety of sentence types in my writing, and I have particularly been laboring to achieve good short sentences. It's harder than it sounds.
I've also begun to notice that many students could improve their writing dramatically merely by setting their sights on shorter sentences. Many students have somehow got the assumption that scholarly writing requires a certain tone of voice. I don’t know where this assumption comes from. I'm inclined to blame it on the rhetorical posturing of well-meaning but fundamentally inept high school English teachers -- the kind of teacher who promotes "critique" and "decoding" of "texts" instead of explanation and clarity of ideas. I don't blame these teachers. I hope they will still be allowed into heaven. I know they're only doing what they're told. At any rate, whatever the source of this malaise, the symptoms are evident in the tendency of students to obfuscate simple ideas through a complexification of syntax, a multiplication of imprecise verbs instead of the selection of the one strong verb, and a deliberate substitution of polysyllabic words whose meanings are often vague and slippery for smaller ones whose meanings are plain and solid. It's all very anti-working-class. The student's shame of his uneducated parents and their drab suburban home is transferred to a (deeper and more scandalous) shame of plain speech. Nothing good will come of this.
So, for the past decade, I've been encouraging students to aim for shorter sentences that say exactly what you want to say, not for longer sentences that sound the way you would like to sound. And -- physician, heal thyself -- I've been trying to do it too. Here, for sure, and now in my first book to appear over the next year.
I've also been noticing short sentences when I read. Sometimes I've underlined a sentence simply because it's so short and good. One of the theological geniuses of the short sentence is Tertullian. Some of Tertullian's most impressive (and humorous) rhetorical effects are achieved with short sentences. In his treatise on the Trinity Against Praxeas, he cites a list of biblical texts used by his opponents, and then responds drily with a two-word sentence: "Legimus omnia" -- "We've read all that". What a sentence! Sharp as a sniper's shot. The whole of Tertullian's little treatise on the Roman toga (De Pallio) is abuzz with similar short-sentence effects, humorous and biting and precise.
What a difference it'd make if contemporary theological and philosophical writers did that! (Preachers, too, while we're at it.) At the end of his treatise on the toga, Tertullian avows his preference for the philosopher's cloak over the Roman toga with the short exclamation: "Gaude pallium et exsulta!" -- "Rejoice, O cloak, and exult!" I will paraphrase the great North African, in praise of short sentences: Rejoice, O short sentence, and triumph!