In fact, most people only read around 25% of what’s on a page.

This is partly because people tend to scan, not read. They're also a problem for highly literate people with extensive vocabularies. Long sentences aren't just difficult for people who struggle with reading or have a cognitive disability like dyslexia or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. At 25 words, sentences become difficult, and 29 words or longer, very difficult. Studies also show that sentences of 11 words are considered easy to read, while those of 21 words are fairly difficult. At 43 words, comprehension drops to less than 10%. Writing guru Ann Wylie describes research showing that when average sentence length is 14 words, readers understand more than 90% of what they’re reading. We know people distrust jargon and that being clear and direct helps - as do shorter sentences. This means we need to write in a way everybody understands.

GOV.UK should be an authoritative, trusted source. When you write more, people understand less If you can’t, make sure they’re in plain English. In the style guide we’re now saying that if you have sentences longer than 25 words, try to break them up or condense them. The Service Design Manual explains how people read and why sentences longer than 25 words aren't accessible. We recently blogged about our checklist for reviewing content and got a lot of questions about sentence length. See the current GOV.UK content and publishing guidance. The information in this blogpost may now be out of date.

Quickly in a sentence