Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, the founders of developmental cognitive psychology, both suggested that mastery of a concept involves the ability to undo a mental process. The undoing of sentence-combining is de-combining. Thus most sentence combining exercises in KISS are paired with a de-combining exercise. Although more words per main clause is a general measure of syntactic maturity, note how the shorter sentences are often more emphatic, in part because of their shortness, and in part because of the repetition of words.

Lucie was unconscious. She was also happy.

     Good Evening (DO). |

Defarge brought him the wine. He then gave him Good Evening.

You must instantly be obedient. You must be still. And you must be quiet.

      {in themselves} and {in their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, sickness, 

      misery, oppression and neglect} {of all kinds}." |

"All our lives, we have seen our sister-women, in themselves and in their children, suffer poverty. We have seen them suffer nakedness. We have seen them suffer hunger. We have seen them suffer thirst. We have seen them suffer sickness. We have seen them suffer misery. We have seen them suffer oppression. And We have seen them suffer neglect of all kinds."

     then glided {into his view}, floated {by him}, and died away. |

A trading-boat, with a sail of the softened colour of a dead leaf, glided into his view. It floated by him. And then it died away.

      past day}, the real strong rooms, the real express sent ^[#2] {after him}, 

     and the real message returned ^[#2], would all ^[#3] be there. |

The real Banking-house by Temple Bar would be there. The real business of the past day  would be there. The real strong rooms  would be there. The real express sent after him  would be there. And the real message returned would be there.