Academic Jibberish
Stephen Krashen,
Jan 06, 2014
One thing I strive for is clarity in my writing. It's because I'm lazy - I find it a lot easier to write something that is short and clear than to couch ideas in a cloak of academic jargon. But I still have to read it. And I agree, "A great deal of academic writing is incomprehensible even to others in the same area of scholarship." Now the situation isn't as bad as portrayed by McLeans, which focuses on a blog called LOL My Thesis, where students submit plain English versions of their thesis topics. But Alfie Kohn called it: "Because it sometimes seems that scholarship is valued by other academics in direct proportion to its inaccessibility, some individuals may have an instinctive aversion to writing in simple sentences even if they could remember how to do so." More: Digiday's buzzword replacement guide. And CSS-Tricks, words to avoid in educational writing.
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