Mar 14 2023

Sentence Depth and the Cognitive Buffer

When someone is reading your writing they likely keep a small memory buffer of what they just read as context for what they are reading next. As the reader goes along, they pick apart sentences, interpret, digest, and internalize your message - hearing their voice in their head, forming your words. Everyone’s buffer is different from each other, and different from day to day. The general level of restedness, distraction, hunger, or simply interest in you or your topic, can shorten or lengthen the buffer.

So that covers the buffer size, but now let’s talk about how the buffer fills as someone reads. Take a simple example of a sentence with a parenthetical, which may or may not actually be contained between parenthesis:

One nice thing about airlines, that airline leasing companies like to highlight, from time to time, is that the planes, from a physical perspective, are mobile assets.

What makes that sentence tough to understand is that it dips in and out of the mainline narrative and parenthetical side statements. The core of the sentence is One nice thing about airlines is that the planes are mobile assets.” The extra commentary are that the airline leasing companies periodically highlight the fact of the mobility of the assets and that the mobility is physical, versus perhaps financial. The reader has to keep the core sentence in mind while dipping in and out of the extra commentary, and at one point when from time to time” is added, the reader goes two levels deep with 1/ main narrative 2/ side commentary on airline leasing companies perspective and 3/ the occasional nature of the commentary.

Represented visually, the sentence flow and depth looks like this:

Sentence DepthSentence Depth

The greater the depth, the more the context switching, the more the reader has to keep in their mental buffer before they understand what you mean.

A much simpler way to write that example sentence, and convey the same content, would be:

One nice thing about airlines is that planes are physical mobile assets. Airline leasing companies like to highlight this fact as well, from time to time.

The main point is conveyed and then the extra commentary is added, keeping the sentence depth flat and reducing the cognitive buffer needed to understand the concept.