I have seen an alarming trend in the native English-speaking clients I have worked with, and even in myself. This is the trend to over complicate their writing. For some reason, students have the idea that good academic writing is using as many words as possible and pushing the limits of their vocabulary to the breaking point.
Academic writing is about conveying intellectual ideas. While it is important to use a formal style, you know, avoid first or second person and colloquial phrases, it is most important for the writer to get his or her point across in a way that his or her audience can understand. This is especially important for undergraduate students whose papers are being graded by a professor. Professors have to read paper after paper, they do not have time to pick through large words and obscure sentences in order to figure out what a student means. Sure, “the spherical plaything made of rubber is a bright crimson color” works, but isn’t “the ball is red” more effective?
Papers written in a “the spherical plaything made of rubber is a bright crimson color” way can end up sounding like pretentious gibberish rather than actually intellectual. However, writing a “the ball is red” paper means staying away from vocabulary you don’t quite know how to use, adding extra phrases or descriptions that aren’t important to the meaning of the sentence, and anything else that complicates the ideas in the paper.
Comments
You write, "Sure, 'the
You write, "Sure, 'the spherical plaything made of rubber is a bright crimson color' works, but isn’t 'the ball is red' more effective?" Usually, yes. But what if you're writing to some audience that wants an approach to syntax and vocabulary that might make "spherical plaything" preferable? For example, what if you were writing a proposal for an audience that, perhaps inexplicably, preferred the more wordy description--or that was easily snowed by such language? If that audience would be more impressed by "spherical playthings," and if they were more likely to fund your proposal if you used such language, then wouldn't "spherical playthings" be more effective? I'd say it boils down to audience.
"The desire to be understood
"The desire to be understood by others can only reinforce the downward urge of the intellect...Retention of strangeness is the only antidote to estrangement." - Theodor Adorno
As long as the audience is thoroughly considered, I don't think you can automatically discard dense prose. Since the Professor is the audience, they should be able to understand 'large words.' Verbosity, on the other hand, is another ballgame altogether.
I completely agree with you.
I completely agree with you. One of my goals for grad school and beyond has become "to be a concise and straightfoward writer." I can understand a desire to obsure or make the sudience work when it comes to writing literature as art, but when the goal is the transfer of knowledge effective writing is plain writing.
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