Via Arts and Letters Daily and The Chronicle of Higher Education:
Why should a profession that trades in words and dedicates itself to the transmission of knowledge so often turn out prose that is turgid, soggy, wooden, bloated, clumsy, obscure, unpleasant to read, and impossible to understand?
Click the link to see more: Why Academics’ Writing Stinks – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Points:
- Is this the reason? “Scholars in the softer fields spout obscure verbiage to hide the fact that they have nothing to say.”
- Is this a reason? “Difficult writing is unavoidable because of the abstractness and complexity of our subject matter.”
- Is this a reason? “…the gatekeepers of journals and university presses insist on ponderous language as proof of one’s seriousness.”
What the writer thinks is the reason: “Their goal is not so much communication as self-presentation—an overriding defensiveness against any impression that they may be slacker than their peers in hewing to the norms of the guild.”
Click through to the article for some enlightening instruction on how to keep your prose clean and classic.