Paste your text above to count sentences, words, and paragraphs together — the fastest way to spot writing that runs long.
Sentence Length Benchmarks
| Style | Average sentence length |
|---|---|
| Easy reading (web, marketing) | 12–18 words per sentence |
| Standard prose | 15–20 words |
| Academic writing | 20–25 words |
| Hard-to-follow territory | 30+ words |
Guidelines reviewed as of July 2026.
Average Sentence Length Drives Readability
Readability formulas like Flesch–Kincaid are built largely on two numbers: words per sentence and syllables per word. Divide your word count by the sentence count above to get your average — if it is past 25, most readers are re-reading sentences to parse them. Professional web copy usually averages 15–20 words per sentence, with plenty of variation around that mean.
Fixing Long-Sentence Syndrome
- Vary rhythm deliberately. A short sentence after two long ones lands like a punch.
- Split at conjunctions: most 35-word sentences are two good sentences joined by “and” or “which”.
- One idea per sentence. If you need a comma splice or a semicolon to hold it together, it wants to be two.
- Read aloud: anywhere you run out of breath is a place your reader loses the thread.
How does this tool count sentences?
Sentences are detected by terminal punctuation — periods, question marks, and exclamation points followed by a space or line end. Abbreviations like “e.g.” can occasionally register as sentence breaks, so treat the count as a close estimate for very abbreviation-heavy text.
Do abbreviations like “Dr.” or “U.S.” affect the count?
They can. Like any automated counter, this tool treats sentence-ending punctuation as a break, so text dense with abbreviations may count slightly high. For normal prose the count is accurate; for legal or academic text treat it as a close estimate.