Why Is Academic Writing So Academic? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?

#41

Post by eli_gottlieb » Tue, Jan 27, 2015, 10:01 AM UTC

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…

Academic and journalistic writing is not supposed to hold the poetry of Biblical verse.

Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?

#42

Post by kmonad » Tue, Jan 27, 2015, 11:51 AM UTC

jballanc wrote: post #10

jonnathanson wrote: post #5

Academic writing suffers, albeit to a lesser degree, from the same problem that has made legalese so annoying to read: the need for specificity. Also, a need for references. Not just citations, but verbal references. What is jargon, after all, if not a specific and functional set of keywords and referents used in common by a given group or field? Jargon is efficient in academia. It is a common standard. If I write so…

It's not just specificity. Take for example the physical sciences' tradition of using passive voice, exclusively, when writing about the methods used in an experiment. You never write "We poured the mixture" or "We measured the transmittance", but rather "The mixture was poured into a 250ml Erlenmeyer flask" and "Transmittance was measured using a model 500 spectrophotometer with a 580nm filter". The reason, as anyon…

In my experience, younger PIs and the field I work in in general is moving away from the passive voice. While your experience seems to be that passive voice is clearer, from my perspective it is clunky and inelegant.

I disagree that 1st person voice results in flowery prose. Bad writing remains bad independent of passive or first person style.

It can be much clearer and, well, direct to use first person voice ("To assess wether the effect data X suggests holds true when Y, we do Z1, Z2, and Z3 as they cover Y1, Y2, Y3". This is clean and clear and much nicer than the respective passive voice. But again, perhaps just my opinion.

Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?

#43

Post by jonnathanson » Tue, Jan 27, 2015, 7:13 PM UTC

graycat wrote: post #31

jonnathanson wrote: post #5

Academic writing suffers, albeit to a lesser degree, from the same problem that has made legalese so annoying to read: the need for specificity. Also, a need for references. Not just citations, but verbal references. What is jargon, after all, if not a specific and functional set of keywords and referents used in common by a given group or field? Jargon is efficient in academia. It is a common standard. If I write so…

> to describe a phenomenon there's already a perfectly dreadful word for. Gee, in high school I was taught that a preposition is a bad word to end a sentence with!

For whatever it's worth, I saw what you did there and attempted to re-upvote you. Well played, sir.

Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?

#44

Post by graycat » Tue, Jan 27, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

jonnathanson wrote: post #43

graycat wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to describe a phenomenon there's already a perfectly dreadful word for. Gee, in high school I was taught that a preposition is a bad word to end a sentence with!

For whatever it's worth, I saw what you did there and attempted to re-upvote you. Well played, sir.

Thank you!