If you've spent any time using AI to write, you've probably noticed something.
It has two favourite punctuation marks, the dash and the semicolon.
Especially when it's trying to sound clever.
It loves long sentences. It strings ideas together. It adds another thought. Then another. Before you know it, you're halfway through a paragraph wondering what the point was.
The irony?
AI is brilliant at generating words. But it's surprisingly bad at deciding which ones deserve to stay.
Your reader is lazy. That's not an insult.
It's reality.
People don't read websites. They scan them.
They're looking for answers. They want the point. Fast.
Long, winding sentences ask your reader to do more work. They have to hold multiple ideas in their head at once. They have to untangle the sentence before they can understand it.
Most won't bother. They'll leave.
Short sentences remove friction.
They let ideas breathe.
They create rhythm.
Most importantly, they make your message impossible to miss.
Short sentences force better thinking.
This is where things get interesting.
Writing short sentences isn't just about making life easier for your reader.
It makes life harder for the writer. And that's a good thing.
When you're limited to one clear thought at a time, you can't hide behind jargon. You can't ramble. You can't pile idea upon idea until nobody knows what you were trying to say.
You have to decide what's important.
Then say it.
That's not just better writing.
That's better thinking.
AI doesn't know what's important.
...At least not yet.
Ask ChatGPT to write a paragraph and it'll happily give you five ideas wrapped into one sentence.
It doesn't naturally know which idea deserves the spotlight.
It doesn't instinctively pause for emphasis.
It doesn't always recognise when one sentence should become four.
That's where human editing still wins.
The best AI users aren't the ones who copy and paste.
They're the ones who cut.
They remove.
They simplify.
They know that writing isn't about adding more words.
It's about leaving the right ones behind.
Try this.
Take one paragraph you've written.
Now split every sentence that's longer than two lines.
Read it again.
Does it feel faster? Clearer? More confident?
That's because every sentence now has one job.
Readers appreciate that.
So does Google.
A simple rule.
If a sentence contains more than one main idea, it probably contains one sentence too many.
Cut it.
Your readers will thank you.
And if you're using AI?
Edit without mercy.
Because great writing isn't measured by how many words you use.
It's measured by how quickly someone understands exactly what you meant.