Where do they get these ideas?

2 November 2007 0 By Viv McWaters

My partner is a scientist who works with quite a few PhD students. This week he was reading a final thesis and making some significant suggestions about the writing style – especially the length of sentences. Long, convoluted sentences don’t really help with understanding the writer’s point. So he broke down some of these very long sentences into shorter ones, some with only five words (shock! horror!). Her response? It can’t be a proper sentence if it only has five words.

Eh? Where do they get these ideas?