Sentence minimalism

“I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil” - Truman Capote

Bad papers, essays and writing in general use overly-long sentences. When you are dealing with difficult stuff inside the sentences don’t add to the confusion by making your sentences themselves difficult. Long sentences produce more cognitive sweat and deliver comprehension a harder kick in the nuts than shorter sentences. They are the enemy of effortless reading.

The most actionable way of achieving this Zen state of brevity is to avoid multiple subordinate clauses or run-on sentences, which means your reader is not saddling and unsaddling the whole time. Two commas are more than enough for a sentence and if there are any more it can be chopped up.

Then there are those bloated sentences. Constant revision of your work should help trim them down. If words aren’t buying you something say bye to them. Waffle is costly.

Quite a lot of bloatiness I've spotted on the uploaded essays is repetition of an experiment's method and results. Carve it off; try blending the two together.

For example,

"Functional magnetic resonance imaging was carried out on 23 participants by Beardface (2008) to establish whether there was a 'beard module' in the human visual system. Beardface found the neuroimaging revealed a distinct island of activity in the inferotemporal cortex"

can easily be written as,

"Functional magnetic resonance imaging on 23 participants found a distinct island of activity in the inferotemporal cortex with the presentation of beard stimuli (Beardface, 2008). This little change amounts to a halving of the word count.

Overall, you should be aiming for sentences like Apple design; all that is needed is there and nothing more. You should get the feeling that your words delicately pick up your idea and place it softly into the reader’s mind. Sentences that are lengthy, bloaty or repetitive will deploy clumsily - a discourtesy for which the marker may punish you.

So. Keep. Them. Short.