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Why Academics Stink at Writing

6 points by ritchiea 12y ago

benbreen 12y ago
An irony here: Steven Pinker is himself a fairly bad writer, although he's bad in the way that someone like David Brooks of the NYT is bad (superficial, self-absorbed), as opposed to the classic academic literary sins of prolixity, overuse of jargon, etc.
tzs 12y ago
> I suffer the daily experience of being baffled by articles in my field, my subfield, even my sub-sub-subfield. The methods section of an experimental paper explains, "Participants read assertions whose veracity was either affirmed or denied by the subsequent presentation of an assessment word." After some detective work, I determined that it meant, "Participants read sentences, each followed by the word true or false." The original academese was not as concise, accurate, or scientific as the plain English translation. So why did my colleague feel compelled to pile up the polysyllables? This reminds me of something from "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!". Feynman was attending some kind of interdisciplinary conference, and says: ------- begin quote ------- There was a sociologist who had written a paper for us all to read – something he had written ahead of time. I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out: I couldn’t make head nor tail of it! I figured it was because I hadn’t read any of the books on that list. I have this uneasy feeling of “I’m not adequate,” until finally I said to myself, “I’m gonna stop, and read one sentence slowly, so I can figure out what the hell it means.” So I stopped – at random – and read the next sentence very carefully. I can’t remember it precisely, but it was very close to this: “The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels.” I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? “People read.” ------- end quote ------- Feynman wasn't the only one who could not understand what others were saying: ------- begin quote ------- There was only one thing that happened at that meeting that was pleasant or amusing. At this conference, every word that every guy said at the plenary session was so important that they had a stenotypist there, typing every Goddamn thing. Somewhere on the second day the stenotypist came up to me and said, “What profession are you? Surely not a professor.” “I am a professor,” I said. “Of what?” “Of physics – science.” “Oh! That must be the reason,” he said. “Reason for what?” He said, “You see, I’m a stenotypist, and I type everything that is said here. Now, when the other fellas talk, I type what they say, but I don’t understand what they’re saying. But every time you get up to ask a question or to say something, I understand exactly what you mean – what the question is, and what you’re saying – so I thought you can’t be a professor!” ------- end quote -------

6 points by ritchiea 12y ago

An irony here: Steven Pinker is himself a fairly bad writer, although he's bad in the way that someone like David Brooks of the NYT is bad (superficial, self-absorbed), as opposed to the classic academic literary sins of prolixity, overuse of jargon, etc.

tzs 12y ago

> I suffer the daily experience of being baffled by articles in my field, my subfield, even my sub-sub-subfield. The methods section of an experimental paper explains, "Participants read assertions whose veracity was either affirmed or denied by the subsequent presentation of an assessment word." After some detective work, I determined that it meant, "Participants read sentences, each followed by the word true or false." The original academese was not as concise, accurate, or scientific as the plain English translation. So why did my colleague feel compelled to pile up the polysyllables? This reminds me of something from "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!". Feynman was attending some kind of interdisciplinary conference, and says: ------- begin quote ------- There was a sociologist who had written a paper for us all to read – something he had written ahead of time. I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out: I couldn’t make head nor tail of it! I figured it was because I hadn’t read any of the books on that list. I have this uneasy feeling of “I’m not adequate,” until finally I said to myself, “I’m gonna stop, and read one sentence slowly, so I can figure out what the hell it means.” So I stopped – at random – and read the next sentence very carefully. I can’t remember it precisely, but it was very close to this: “The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels.” I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? “People read.” ------- end quote ------- Feynman wasn't the only one who could not understand what others were saying: ------- begin quote ------- There was only one thing that happened at that meeting that was pleasant or amusing. At this conference, every word that every guy said at the plenary session was so important that they had a stenotypist there, typing every Goddamn thing. Somewhere on the second day the stenotypist came up to me and said, “What profession are you? Surely not a professor.” “I am a professor,” I said. “Of what?” “Of physics – science.” “Oh! That must be the reason,” he said. “Reason for what?” He said, “You see, I’m a stenotypist, and I type everything that is said here. Now, when the other fellas talk, I type what they say, but I don’t understand what they’re saying. But every time you get up to ask a question or to say something, I understand exactly what you mean – what the question is, and what you’re saying – so I thought you can’t be a professor!” ------- end quote -------