AIOpus 5.5 reportedly uses shorter sentences but gives longer answers than Opus 5
Arena says Opus 5.5’s sentences averaged 17% fewer words than Opus 5’s in high-reasoning Text Arena outputs, while answers averaged 6% more words. Hedges and caveats rose 97%.
TLDR
Arena says 10 of 12 writing measures moved in a better direction for Opus 5.5 versus Opus 5 in high-reasoning Text Arena outputs. Average sentence length fell from 12.14 to 10.03 words, while average answer length grew from 453 to 481 words—the longest across the Opus family in its analysis. Arena also reports 95% fewer em dashes and 73% fewer semicolons. But hedges and caveats such as “perhaps” and “arguably” rose 97%, from 0.39 to 0.77 per 1,000 words, the highest rate among the Claude models it analyzed.
