Why the shrinking sentence might tell us more than we think

Every so often, someone announces that the novel is in decline. Usually, this is followed by a familiar roll call of suspects: phones, streaming, BookTok, schools, short attention spans, modern life, the algorithm, and the general moral decay of people who do not own enough bookmarks.

This time, though, the anxiety has a number attached.

A recent Economist piece argued that it is not only that people are reading less, but that “the texture of what is being read is changing,” noting that its analysis of hundreds of New York Times bestsellers found that sentences in popular books have become almost a third shorter since the 1930s.

How to write like Joan Didion

What makes a Joan Didion sentence unmistakable? It’s not only the vocabulary or the rhythm. It’s the control. The precise needlepoint balance between distance and emotion, between clarity and chaos. Her prose doesn’t shout; it slices.

In her best work, Didion captures a moment so cleanly that the emotional aftermath lingers longer than the reading itself. Consider this line from The Year of Magical Thinking:

"Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it."