I have a little macro that finds long sentences in my entire document
and highlights the first word of each long sentence. Generally I will
fix the offending sentence, but it still might be too long. I'd like a
macro that  checks each sentence in the paragraph containing the
offending sentence and removes highlighting (if necessary). Here's
what I have so far.

For the entire document:

Sub longsent()
Dim item As Range

For Each item In ActiveDocument.Sentences

   'item.Select

   If item.Words.Count > 40 Then
       item.Words.First.HighlightColorIndex = wdYellow
       'MsgBox ("Num words = " & item.Words.Count)
   End If

Next item
End Sub

this works for individual sentences, where I have the cursor inside of
the sentence.

Sub testsent()
   Selection.Range.Sentences.First.Select
   Selection.Words.First.HighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight
   If Selection.Words.Count > 40 Then
       MsgBox ("still long " & Selection.Words.Count & " words")
       Selection.Words.First.HighlightColorIndex = wdYellow
   End If
   Selection.Range.Sentences.First.Select
   rem try to deselect sentence - doesn't work

End Sub

Thanks!