Which form of academic writing is considered more useful - brief or complicated sentences?

Answer 1

Generally you should aim for clarity and conciseness, but also include a variety of sentence types. Short sentences are good for emphasis. Try to sprinkle some complex sentences throughout, however, by using dependent clauses ("Although..." , "Since...", etc). If you have a section with a lot of short sentences, try combining the sentences by making some of them into dependent clauses. Hope this helps!