Comments on: Why do so many academics write badly?

By: deanne

deanne — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 17:24:00 +0000

Thank you for this. I’ve worked in the academic world for years. I just wrote my first fiction novel and the experience moving from one world to another was akin to the trick we used to try as children when we’d press our arms tightly against a door jamb and step away to feel them release and float up.

By: Lori Straus

Lori Straus — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 23:33:00 +0000

Making changes in the academic world is also very difficult in general, simply because everything moves so slowly.

By: Laura

Laura — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 21:42:00 +0000

PW#418 – Why do so many academics write badly?:

What a very practical power writing e-newsletter. Thanks for
always doing such a great job making these tips fun to read and practical.

By: organic_mama

organic_mama — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 21:21:00 +0000

This morning on public radio, I heard a scientist use the word
“exceedance,” which is jargon in my field of work. I remember first seeing that word when I became a technical editor for this environmental consulting firm, and thinking that it was wrong. So this article is timely!

By: Beyond the Outline

Beyond the Outline — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 21:20:00 +0000

This is a great post; I appreciate your insights into the cause of bad academic writing and look forward to reading the articles you linked to. Your point number 2 can apply to any experts. Jargon is a tool when they talk with their peers, but a handicap when they want to explain their work to a layperson. This is a point I’ve been making in my own marketing since I started my business.

By: Jill O'Mahony Stewart

Jill O'Mahony Stewart — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 21:15:00 +0000

Since I’m a business-person-turned-academic, I hope I don’t fall into the traps you’ve outlined. My colleagues in Chicago are immersed in a project to develop and place opinion pieces in mass media outlets related to their research. The effort requires “plain speak” to synthesize and interpret their work in relevant terms to general audiences.

By: rodgriff

rodgriff — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 21:02:00 +0000

It is a very interesting area. Having been a professor of public health for about 20 years and now writing fiction in retirement I can see both sides fairly clearly. When you are writing an academic paper there are several concerns. At a macro level the writing has to sound like one of the club, think of it as a sociological test, the peer reviewers and referees are asking themselves “can we trust this author?” So it has to sound like other stuff in the field. The second thing is it must leave no loopholes, the last thing you want is someone picking on one detail and then using that to undermine the whole paper. The argument being “if they can’t get this detail right, how can we believe anything else?” It is often a nonsense argument but is can be devastating to a reputation. That need for total accuracy tends to lead to overexplanation and often makes for turgid text.
The author is not concerned if they bore the audience to tears, and they are probably only interested in the opinions of a small number of peers.
Writing fiction, or features for mass consumption is quite different. The main thing is for a mass audience to understand the material. In fiction it is OK if each reader comes away with a slightly different story in their head. The writer is trying to connect with the reader’s imagination and previous experience. That works best when the reader fills in a few gaps themselves, it makes them more engaged. An academic paper on the other hand seeks to leave nothing to the imagination.
I used to write public health reports, in those we sought to reach a wider audience, so we did readability stats on everything, our stated aim was to be as easy to understand as the nine O’clock news, but we also had the reports peer reviewed to be sure that the science passed muster. My staff used that as an excuse to put their contributions on their academic CVs.

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 19:47:00 +0000

You are so right! One time when I was involved in the writing of a contract proposal for the maintenance of a defence radar system, we had the assistance of a consultant experienced in the production of such documents. His task was to convolute our clear English into what he called “USAAF language” (“recognized as professional”). He claimed also that there was perceived merit in the thickness of the stack of paper.
We found that we quite quickly learned how to write that way ourselves, and we had to make a conscious effort to get back to our normal style.

By: Vanessa

Vanessa — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 18:11:00 +0000

This was an ongoing fight I had with some of my professors. They felt my writing was far too short and “too the point”. I had made my arguments and gave enough supporting evidence but they felt I should have been writing more. I never understood why a wordy 20 page paper was “better” than a succinct 10 page paper.

By: George Held

George Held — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 17:25:00 +0000

I work in the education world at an Educational Service Agency, and recently was given a document that a scholarly gentleman (former university college of education teacher) had put together for our organization. When I did the readability test, it came out at grade level 17! I proposed changing it to make it more accessible to the average legislator and/or man/woman on the street, but he wanted no part of that. “It’s fine as written,” was his position. So, it will remain an esoteric document, which I hope no one hands to a legislator as background reading! It’s as confounding as legislative language with their “notwithstanding” terminology, which is another area of language written for and by mostly another set of academics – lawyers.