In Appreciation of Long Sentences

Long sentences are bad, we are told. The enemy of plain English. Today the average sentence is 14.4 words long, and that’s less than a quarter of what it was 200 years ago. The UK Government has gone as far as to mandate a maximum count of 25 words in official publications. (For reference, if…

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An excerpt from a book review written by Lee Child

I came across this review of Hunters in the Dark by Lawrence Osborne, written by none other than Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher novels. I’ve pulled out his intro below, which contains an uncomplicated and practical definition of ‘literary’ as opposed to ‘suspense’ writing. A valuable distinction for genre writers wanting to move…

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