Sentence length is one of the few writing problems you can diagnose with a number. Most students who are told their writing is "hard to follow" are writing sentences that run past 30 words, and the fix is mechanical rather than mysterious.
This matters particularly when you are writing academic English as a second or third language, as most Nepali students are. Long sentences multiply the chances of a clause going astray, and a marker reads that as unclear thinking even when the underlying argument is sound.
Academic prose sits comfortably around 15 to 20 words per sentence on average. Above 25 the writing becomes tiring; above 30 the reader is usually re-reading to find the main verb.
The average matters less than the variation. A page of uniformly 20-word sentences is monotonous even though the average is ideal. Mixing a short sentence after two longer ones creates emphasis, and it is the easiest rhythm improvement available to you.
Find the main verb. If you have to search for it, the reader did too. Most overlong sentences contain two or three complete ideas joined by "and", "which" or a comma splice — separating them at those joints usually fixes the sentence without rewriting a word.
Watch particularly for chains of relative clauses: "the policy which was introduced in 2019 which aimed to address the problem that had been identified…". Each "which" adds distance between subject and verb. Break the chain into two sentences and the meaning becomes immediately clear.
Nepali and English order clauses differently, and a sentence composed in Nepali then rendered into English often arrives with the main clause at the end after a long run of subordinate material. It is grammatically valid English and still hard to read.
The remedy is to state the main claim first and let the qualifications follow. "Enrolment rose sharply after the scholarship was introduced, although retention did not improve" reads better than the reverse ordering, and it is the pattern academic English expects.
Sentences are detected by terminal punctuation, so abbreviations with full stops — et al., i.e., Dr. — can inflate the count slightly. Treat the figure as indicative rather than exact.
It also says nothing about whether a sentence is any good. A 12-word sentence can be vague and a 28-word sentence can be perfectly clear. Use the number to find candidates for revision, then judge them by reading.
Around 15 to 20 words for academic writing. Above 25 becomes tiring to read; variation between long and short matters as much as the average.
Abbreviations containing full stops — et al., i.e., Dr. — are read as sentence endings. Treat the count as indicative.
No. A well-built long sentence is fine. The problem is a long sentence containing several unrelated ideas, which is what most of them are.
Yes — it flags the overlong sentences that most often make second-language academic writing read as unclear, which is a mechanical problem with a mechanical fix.
No. Counting runs entirely in your browser.