In One Day in the Life of the English Language: A Microcosmic Usage Handbook (Princeton University Press, 2015), Frank L. Cioffi offers some sage advice: “Strive for sentences that don’t require your reader to reread to get the message, that don’t spark initial confusion at all.”
Just last week, I’d written something that made perfect sense to me yet caused a couple of folks at helveticka world headquarters to stumble. While it depends on the reader, of course, that’s an ominous sign—since clarity should be your first goal as a writer—and a pretty good indication that you might want to rework that sentence.
