English Lessons for Academics

[sitakali]

Still think academia isn't elist?

A Step-By-Step Analysis of Academese, for the Layperson

Despite the automatic assumption to the contrary, academics cannot write worth shit. It’s true. When it comes to writing, brevity (or at least lucidity) is the soul of wit. These creatures don’t understand the concept of comprehension. Apparently, academics are

Comments

[ext_94541]

"everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler" -- da Man

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

[descartes_rock]

Very funny!

Isn't it possible that the 90 per cent are only marginally better than average and the other 10 per cent are abysmally bad? That would be statistically possible I think.

(of course I'm just joking -- thought I should make that clear since you don't know me very well)

[ext_104322]

Well done! As an aspiring academic (I'm currently studying anthropology, hoping to go for a Ph.D.) one of my greatest fears is that my writing will suffer. One problem is that the technical guidelines for academic journals are so rigid and they force us to use that kind of jargony, complicated style, but I think it also has something to do with the academic culture. In any case, I'm hoping that I'll be able to hold on to some of my limited writing ability so that I could potentially write for a popular audience as well as an academic one.