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Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?

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Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?

#21

Post by roel_v »

benbreen wrote: post #11
jballanc wrote: post #7

I think what the author is missing is the possibility that many academics are simply bad writers . Academic writing in many fields is extremely formulaic just so that the relevant information can be communicated regardless of the writing skill of the author. Add to that the fact that many academics are writing in a language that is not their first, so even if they had considerable skill in their mother tongue, there…

I've found that even academics who are actually quite good at writing for popular venues still fall into typically academic patterns (like the overuse of passive voice or jargon) in their journal articles. I blame it on peer review more than anything else - my experience with the peer review process (n=6) has been that unorthodox turns of phrase or narrative quirks are often the first things to get flagged. Peer revi…

I had a student once who is British but worked for a Spanish university. He was (is) a very good writer, very clear, good structure etc. He had a paper reviewed once by someone who, probably because he saw the affiliation or the study area the paper was about (which was in Spain), assumed the author was Spanish, and put in his comments 'the author should consider having his writing reviewed by a native speaker to correct some of the obvious mistakes'.

I LOL'ed that day.

Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?

#22

Post by SixSigma »

As Orwell illustrated [1]

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

becomes

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

Trying to sound clever has gone too far, just write the damn words.

[1] http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit...

Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?

#23

Post by cafebeen »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #6

Another problem with academic writing is the arcane jargon can be so abstract as to be nearly meaningless and easy to exploit. See academic hoaxes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair .

This isn't generally true though, at top journals and conferences peer review would trash any paper that uses meaningless jargon.

Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?

#24

Post by jeffreyrogers »

mixedmath wrote: post #9

I am reminded of the recent obituary of Grothendieck: http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendie... Two extremely well-known mathematicians were asked by Nature to write an obituary for the late Grothendieck. They wrote it to be mostly understood by a nonmathematical audience, but Nature ultimately rejected the obituary on it being too technical. It is almost as if each discipline has become an isla…

The Princeton Companion to Mathematics does a pretty good job of explaining math to non-mathematicians, however, I expect that it was a huge undertaking and benefited from having excellent editors.

Of course, you lose some rigor in doing this, but the central ideas are still intact (as far as I can tell) and it gives better intuition for those new to the field of study in question than a fully rigorous, technical approach would.

Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?

#25

Post by jeffreyrogers »

I expect part of the problem is that people who are attracted by clear writing and thinking are turned off by the academic fields that suffer most from overly academic writing.

There are some academics however, who are quite good at conveying their ideas, even in fields that are otherwise noteworthy for their opaqueness to outsiders. The economist Deirdre McCloskey is one example. I've read some systems CS papers that were quite good as well (Google has had several good ones, including this one [1]). Many academic papers are garbage though, and another reason is because they aren't saying anything worth noting. It's a lot easier to hide bullshit via obfuscation than through clarity.

[1]: http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43146.html

Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?

#26

Post by qu4z-2 »

SixSigma wrote: post #22

As Orwell illustrated [1] I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. becomes Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tenden…

In fairness, I suspect reading a paper written in the first style would be even worse.

EDIT: I can totally get behind the "classic" style referenced in the Pinker link elsewhere in this thread.

Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?

#27

Post by Pyret »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #25

I expect part of the problem is that people who are attracted by clear writing and thinking are turned off by the academic fields that suffer most from overly academic writing. There are some academics however, who are quite good at conveying their ideas, even in fields that are otherwise noteworthy for their opaqueness to outsiders. The economist Deirdre McCloskey is one example. I've read some systems CS papers tha…

I expect part of the problem is that people who are attracted by clear writing and thinking are turned off by the academic fields that suffer most from overly academic writing.

In math formal language is easier to read than the informal one. Mathematicians write proofs in informal, paragraph style while newcomers are taught to read/write proofs in the most formal way because the latter is much more structured and clear.

Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?

#28

Post by zimbu668 »

qu4z-2 wrote: post #26
SixSigma wrote: post #22

As Orwell illustrated [1] I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. becomes Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tenden…

In fairness, I suspect reading a paper written in the first style would be even worse. EDIT: I can totally get behind the "classic" style referenced in the Pinker link elsewhere in this thread.

See for yourself: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+1
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