Let’s flip through the hypotheses and see whether the evidence is compelling:
The average reader has gotten smarter and prefers shorter, simpler sentences.
Doesn’t seem very plausible to me. In general smarter texts tend to have longer sentences, at least in English (compare academic journals to popular science articles, or HPMOR to Harry Potter). That said, maybe there’s a Simpson’s paradox thing going. Also, I’m less sure which direction it goes in Chinese, unfortunately.
Longer sentences are more suitable for reading silently, but shorter sentences are more suitable for reading out loud.
This seems eminently plausible to me. It’s easier for me to hold a sentence in my head when reading quietly, than to express the whole idea with the right intonations if I were to read out loud. Somebody like Trump, with a more vernacular style, speak in shorter sentences than someone like Obama, with a more literary style.
Longer sentences (in English) are just better, i.e. they promote faster reading and better comprehension.
I do not find this plausible. I expect books to evolve to become more readable, rather than less, as writers collectively get more practice and we have greater cultural evolution.
Let’s flip through the hypotheses and see whether the evidence is compelling:
Doesn’t seem very plausible to me. In general smarter texts tend to have longer sentences, at least in English (compare academic journals to popular science articles, or HPMOR to Harry Potter). That said, maybe there’s a Simpson’s paradox thing going. Also, I’m less sure which direction it goes in Chinese, unfortunately.
This seems eminently plausible to me. It’s easier for me to hold a sentence in my head when reading quietly, than to express the whole idea with the right intonations if I were to read out loud. Somebody like Trump, with a more vernacular style, speak in shorter sentences than someone like Obama, with a more literary style.
I do not find this plausible. I expect books to evolve to become more readable, rather than less, as writers collectively get more practice and we have greater cultural evolution.