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Also consider that by the numbers, most of academia wasn't even born native English speaking, whether they now live in an English speaking country or not. A pe

Also consider that by the numbers, most of academia wasn't even born native English speaking, whether they now live in an English speaking country or not. A personal note, I'm a native english speaker living abroad, with a non-native-english speaking superiors. While their writing is quite good, i find myself battling constantly for what we might consider 'better, more clear' writing, in favor of the current scientific writing 'trends' in our field. A successful paper or two with a weird phrase or typo will end up reshaping that field to adopt this language, as authors of subsequent work attempt to align themselves to the original topic.

bluetomcat 5y ago
The "concise and clear" style of writing that's prevalent in the Anglophile world isn't nearly as popular in other cultures. In primary school in post-communist Bulgaria, we were given bonus points for constructing compound sentences with 3 or 4 clauses, for using different words for referring to the same entity (rich vocabulary, supposedly). Repeating the same noun in a consequent sentence was a big no-no. Writing in a "concise" way made you look "simple" to the teacher, and complex sentences made a good impression even when the content is factually or semantically unsound.
- chalst 5y ago
  It's partly the same in much early writing instruction in the UK and there are pedagogical advantages to encouraging learning writers to embrace ambitious word choice and grammar and risk making mistakes. This should not be the final goal of writing instruction.