Where the sentence stops

It tells the reader they can rest. One thought has finished. They can hold it, set it down, and pick up the next.

Long sentences take that rest away. The reader starts carrying a subject, then a clause about the subject, then an exception, then a reason for the exception, and somewhere around the fourth turn they have forgotten what the subject was. They do not complain. They just stop reading, usually without noticing why.

Most writing that loses people does not lose them on the idea. It loses them in the grammar. The point was fine. It simply arrived at the end of a corridor nobody wanted to walk down.

Once you look, it is everywhere. A school circular that explains the new pick-up arrangements in one sentence the length of a paragraph. A label on a pack that tries to warn, instruct and reassure all at once, held together by commas. A message to a friend that asks three things and makes each of them harder to answer.

The repair needs no talent. Find the sentence that runs on. Look for the place where one thought ends and another begins. Put a full stop there.

It is possible to overdo it. A whole page of four-word sentences reads like a telegram.

That page is rare. The runaway sentence is not. When unsure, cut.