How to Fix Long, Hard-to-Read Sentences: A Measured Rewrite Method
A practical method for finding and fixing overlong sentences, with measurable targets, before and after examples and the rewriting moves that work.
Published September 11, 2026 · By Sudip Bhowmick
Advice such as write shorter sentences is easy to give and hard to apply. Which sentences? How short? The useful approach is to measure first, find the real offenders and then use a small set of rewriting moves on them. You do not need to chop everything into fragments. You need to find the handful of sentences that make readers stumble.
Measure Before You Edit
Paste your text into the Online Sentence Counter. It reports the number of sentences, the average length in words, the longest and shortest sentence and how many go past 25 words. Those numbers give you a baseline. For general web writing, an average of 14 to 20 words is comfortable. Technical and legal writing runs longer. The average matters less than the outliers, so go straight to the list of sentences over 25 words.
Why Long Sentences Are Hard
Readers hold the beginning of a sentence in memory until they reach the end. If a sentence puts several ideas, two or three conditions or a long interruption between the subject and its verb, the reader has to keep many things in mind. Length itself is not the problem. Distance between the subject and the verb, and stacked ideas, are.
Seven Rewriting Moves
- ▸Split at a conjunction. If a sentence contains and, but, so or which, and each side could stand alone, make two sentences.
- ▸Bring the subject and verb together. Move interruptions to the beginning or end.
- ▸Turn a list buried in a sentence into a bullet list.
- ▸Replace a noun phrase with a verb. The implementation of the validation of the form becomes validating the form.
- ▸Cut hedges and filler: in order to, it should be noted that, due to the fact that, at this point in time.
- ▸Prefer the active voice when the actor matters: the team approved the plan instead of the plan was approved by the team.
- ▸Delete the sentence if it repeats the previous one.
A Before and After Example
Before, 52 words: Our platform, which has been developed over several years in cooperation with customers from a variety of industries and which is continually updated to reflect changes in regulations, allows users to create reports, share them with colleagues and export them in several formats, provided that they have the necessary permissions.
After, three sentences, 43 words: Customers from many industries helped us build the platform over several years. We update it whenever regulations change. With the right permissions, you can create reports, share them with colleagues and export them in several formats.
The meaning is the same. The reader meets one idea at a time, and the subject and verb are never far apart.
Do Not Overcorrect
- ▸A page of sentences all the same length is tiring. Mix short and long ones for rhythm.
- ▸A long sentence is fine when it is well structured, such as a list with a clear pattern.
- ▸Do not chase a number. The goal is the reader's comfort, not an average of exactly 15.
- ▸Keep necessary precision in legal, medical and technical text, and use headings, numbered steps and definitions to make it easier to follow.
A Quick Editing Routine
Run the counter on a finished draft. Fix every sentence over 30 words, and look hard at those over 25. Read the result aloud: any place where you run out of breath needs a full stop. Run the counter again and compare. Most drafts improve noticeably after ten minutes of this and a short list of cut phrases.
Conclusion
Measure sentence length, target the outliers and use a few reliable moves: split at conjunctions, keep subject and verb close, turn embedded lists into bullets, cut filler and use the active voice. Keep some variety, and judge success by how easily a reader gets through the text.
Free Tool
Open the Online Sentence Counter