What you can learn from the horrible prose of academia

If you’ve ever read academic writing, you know it’s terrible, turgid, boring, obtuse, opaque and generally horrendous. And if you’re anything like me, you really don’t care why that is. So a Chronicle of Higher Education piece headlined Why Academics Stink at Writing ought to be of no interest.

But I found the story interesting because its writer, Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker, author of “The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century,” doesn’t just talk about why academics stink at writing. He talks about how they stink at writing.

And guess what: A lot of the ways that academics stink at writing are the same ways the rest of us stink at writing. When we do, that is. Here’s just one example:

Hedging. Academics mindlessly cushion their prose with wads of fluff that imply they are not willing to stand behind what they say. Those include almost, apparently, comparatively, fairly, in part, nearly, partially, predominantly, presumably, rather, relatively, seemingly, so to speak, somewhat, sort of, to a certain degree, to some extent, and the ubiquitous I would argue. (Does that mean you would argue for your position if things were different, but are not willing to argue for it now?)

How often have you seen those words in sportswriting, or used them yourself? I would argue it’s rather common. A hedging word I’m sort of partial to is “pretty.” If I want to say something’s good but I don’t want to seem too enthusiastic, I’ll write that it’s “pretty good.”

Oh, yeah. “Sort of” is another one. All hedging doesn’t involve two-dollar words like “presumably.” The concept is the same even if you use relatively earthy words, like “kinda.”

See what I did there? Relatively.

Pinker also writes about apologizing—explaining why your task is so hard, to get forgiveness in advance if your piece isn’t good—scare quotes, which he calls “shudder quotes,” and metaconcepts and nominalizations, which I’ll let you explore. They all involve obfuscation of one kind or another, when the goal of writing should be clarity.

When I advised a college newspaper, I used to tell my students that my main job was to unteach them everything they’d learned about writing in high school and college. That’s because what they teach in those places is acadamese-lite. Get good at that, and you’ll probably stink at writing.