Dear Geist,
Can I just say one more thing about sentences that go on forever? I agree with Monty Rose (“
,” March 2016) that short sentences are strongest. All my advice from mentors, teachers and on-the-job trainers is to keep sentences short and direct, for quick, clear comprehension by readers.

Dear Wannabe,
In many contexts, a short, simple, direct sentence is best. Certainly when you are giving information or instructions, or writing copy to be read by people you don’t know, or writing anything to be read mainly online, the long sentence or paragraph will cause readers to skip or ignore the text.
But longer passages also have their place, to establish a voice, to invoke a certain atmosphere, to invite the reader along as the writer wrestles with a question. Here’s an example from the book
by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd: a long sentence by Janet Malcolm, followed by Kidder and Todd’s notes on the effect of the passage:
“On the second day of David Souter’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, in September, 1990, Gordon Humphrey, a Republican senator from New Hampshire, with something of the manner of a boarding school headmaster in a satiric novel, asked the nominee, ‘Do you remember the old television program
” This sentence doesn’t have much urgency. In fact, it has a studied leisure, but one senses that the author is up to something.
—The Editors