6 Effective Tips to Make Sentence Easier

Are you looking to make your sentences easier to read? That’s not surprising,

English writing requires a perfect blend of sounds, vocabulary, sentence structure, and grammar. Finding the perfect balance of sentence length and readability is essential to making an impact.

While Long-winded and convoluted sentences can drive the audience away from your writing, too short phrases can make your text look choppy. Here are six practical tips to make sentence easier to comprehend.

Why Should You Make a Sentence Easy to Read?

A complicated sentence can do more harm than good. A poorly written sentence can make your reader feel frustrated and confused. Therefore, it’s important to make your sentence simpler to read.

Your readers should be able to digest and comprehend the information without difficulty.

Writing in a clear and concise language is a great way to demonstrate professionalism in your writing. It is also an exercise to increase your writing efficiency. With the proper techniques, a sentence can contain fewer characters, words, and links but retain the same meaning.

6 Effective Tips to Make Sentence Easier

You can write in easy English and perfectly communicate your thoughts without long-winded sentences. A great sentence doesn’t necessarily need a lot of words.

Learn these six tips that can help you make sentence easier to read and comprehend.

1. Use Short Words Where Possible

Avoid using long words and literary or scientific terms in a sentence. Many people might not know what these words mean, and it can be difficult for them to decode the meaning.

Multi-syllable words can be difficult to comprehend, making it more likely for your readers to miss the crucial points. Moreover, the length of your words is just as important as the length of the sentences. Choosing short words makes the meaning clearer and easy to grasp.

2. Avoid Redundancies to Improve Clarity

Redundancy can hamper the effectiveness of your sentences. It occurs when you add new words with the same meaning to a statement or when you unnecessarily repeat words or phrases. Make sure your words are not repetitive to improve sentence clarity.

An example will make things clear.

Redundant: Can you go to the shop at 12 o’clock in the noon?

In the above sentence, 12 o’clock and noon both refer to 12 p.m.

Revised: Can you go to the shop at noon?

3. Write in Plain English

Your audience should not have to try hard and decipher your sentences. Frequently pausing to comprehend the meaning of a text impacts reader experience and distracts them from understanding the key points.

Therefore, avoid complicated language and write in plain and simple English to convey your message. Then your audience is more likely to understand your content the first time they read it.

4. Use Active Voice in Writing

Active voice text requires the subject of a sentence to perform the verb of the sentence.

Writing in the active voice is recommended for most non-scientific writing in English because it prevents sentences from becoming excessively complex. Active voice allows writers to communicate action with fewer words than passive voice, resulting in more precise sentences and concise writing.

Consider the example below:

Active: Jenny cooked dinner for us at home.

Passive: Dinner was cooked for us by Jenny at home.

5. Get Rid of the Filler Words

Having to stop frequently while reading a sentence won’t let you grasp the main idea.

Filler words are also why a sentence can appear to be very long. Meaningless fillers words can bloat your sentences without you even realizing it. Expletive phrases have no meaning but take up a lot of space in your sentences.

The most common expletive construction involves words like that, which, or who and ‘there + to be’ verb. Let’s clarify with an example.

Wordy: If you look carefully, you will see that there are numerous filler words in this sentence that you don’t need.

Concise: If you look carefully, you will see numerous filler words in this sentence you don’t need.

6. Have a Second Pair of Eyes Review Your Writing

Asking a friend to proofread your work might help you catch grammatical and other mistakes you may have overlooked.

More importantly, this step will ensure that your material is visually engaging and provides crucial information to readers. Moreover, this is a great way to simplify your sentences and increase the readability of your writing.

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, this article provides six practical tips for making your sentences easier to read. Using these methods will improve the length, clarity, and structure of your sentences.

Shorter, simpler, and clearer words efficiently verbalize ideas, allowing for successful communication through writing. Learn to write in a way that makes people want to keep reading and come back for more of your content.