The fighting Prince Harry

[ad hoc]

It wasn't reviewer 2. Or it might have been, but there was no distinction made between any of the comments.

Anyway, I edited it, the article is twice as long as it was previously, and much harder to read (it's better in some regards, but significantly more impenetrable). But then the impression I have is that academic writing of this nature is the only type of writing that one is supposed to do without considering the audience. Instead it's all about creating a interconnected tangle of largely unread papers, all of which serve to support one another by referencing each other. Indeed, one of the key metrics of the worth of an academic is the Hirsch Number, which is purely a measure of how many times you've been referenced by other academics

[Sporting]

I don't go big on it for students, though, as it's more of a pain ethically and such a high number of them turn out to be trying it on when you ask to be put in touch with their supervisor so you can verify that their supervisor/university definitely allows them to hire a proofreader

This is true, and I haven't done it much, save for making relatively minor stylistic changes. But having spoken to university professors here, they take it for granted that external help will be sought..

[Sam]

Yes, I do it for people publishing in academic journals as well. I don't go big on it for students, though, as it's more of a pain ethically and such a high number of them turn out to be trying it on when you ask to be put in touch with their supervisor so you can verify that their supervisor/university definitely allows them to hire a proofreader (one last year was daft enough to actually give me her supervisor's email address while insisting that they'd said it was fine for her to hire someone ... and got extremely upset when she subsequently received an angry email from her supervisor asking why he'd been contacted by a proofreader who claimed to have been approached by her).

However when I got it back the criticisms were all about the writing and the referencing. The mechanical stuff, if you like. Not about the actual content, which is the part I felt was lacking.

This is pretty standard. In the case of most of my clients when they first come to me, reviewer 1 will often have given some good feedback but reviewer 2 (presumably because all the useful points have been taken by reviewer 1) will just say it needs a native-speaking* editor to look at it because the English isn't good enough. They'll often provide this feedback in distinctly not-very-good English. This happens frequently enough to others that on the new editors' section of the professional forum I post on, newbies asking about this sort of feedback will invariably get a response of 'it's not reviewer 2 by any chance?' at some point in the thread.

*They say this. I wouldn't, because there are plenty of great editors who aren't working in their first language. The importance of being a 'native speaker' is increasingly something we're trying to get away from (by 'we' I mean open-minded editorial professionals in the Anglosphere).

[Sporting]

If so, they need to advertise their services better, as I have never come across such a person in my over 30 years of academic and industrial chemistry.

I've done a limited amount of that, mainly for doctors writing research papers but also for students' theses. It's quite enjoyable.

[S. aureus]

Or maybe nobody I know has ever taken them up on their assistance.

[S. aureus]

There are people who make a living helping those people, including non-native English writers, get their articles into shape.

If so, they need to advertise their services better, as I have never come across such a person in my over 30 years of academic and industrial chemistry.

[San Bernardhinault]

My mom taught technical writing and writing classes for business and STEM majors. From her experience, as well as conversations I've had with actual undergraduate STEM and business majors, I can report that a lot of them think writing is beneath their dignity. They often believe that they shouldn't have to take that class or, if they do, that it should be very easy.

I recognise my younger self. Except that because it was a UK university I wasn't ever even taking any courses on writing at all, which is even more shocking.

And, of course, except that I was so shit at actual science it was laughable that I thought anything was beneath me.

[ad hoc]

I was recently asked to write an article for an academic journal. I did so, though I left it a bit late and submitted something that I thought wasn't especially good (in terms of the way I'd presented and interpreted the research data). However, I reasoned, the peer review process will pick me up on that and make suggestions and requests.

However when I got it back the criticisms were all about the writing and the referencing. The mechanical stuff, if you like. Not about the actual content, which is the part I felt was lacking.

I changed it as I saw fit (taking care of the mechanical as well as the (to me) important stuff. We'll see what happens next.

My favourite bit was the length of the list of references. A friend used to be the editor of a well known journal in my field. For other reasons I consulted him about what that entailed a year or so ago, and one of the things he told me, was that the journal had a maximum of 15 references, otherwise, in his words, it just became "look how much I've read". In this article, I assumed that was standard and made sure I didn't go above 15. One of the comments? There are far too few references. The new version has bloody loads. I don't think this has improved it.

[Hot Pepsi]

In my field (chemistry) many academic articles are terribly written. Some aren't. I've always just viewed it mostly as demonstrating that skill in chemistry is not well correlated with skill in writing. There's also an additional hurdle that many of these articles aren't written in the writers native tongue.

There are people who make a living helping those people, including non-native English writers, get their articles into shape. So the prevalence of so much stylistically terrible stuff in print - some of it highly praised - suggests that the editors and reviewers don't have any better ideas of how to make it more readable either. Or they're just so used to it that they've developed an unconscious tolerance for it. Or both.

My mom taught technical writing and writing classes for business and STEM majors. From her experience, as well as conversations I've had with actual undergraduate STEM and business majors, I can report that a lot of them think writing is beneath their dignity. They often believe that they shouldn't have to take that class or, if they do, that it should be very easy.

But every actual career engineer, scientist or business-type person I've met has reported that writing and/or communication skills are very important.

For example, one of my smartest friends double-majored in engineering and history at Swarthmore and then got a PhD in electrical engineering and has been very successful at it. But he said that, especially early in his career, his experience having to write clearly in English was a definite advantage over his peers.

[Nefertiti2]

Pinker, now there's a terrible academic (writer)

[Hot Pepsi]

Academic writing is indeed terrible, but that doesn't mean that university people are bad writers. You can find examples of academics who write unreadable articles in journals, but when they are allowed to write in a freer way (for example in books, or in things like the LRB or so on) they are superb at it.

That's 100% true. Pinker makes that point as well. Some have suggested that academic writing is like that because the editors and reviewers of those journals insist that it be that way and I've heard a lot of anecdotes from academics who claim that reviewers have pushed them to make their work more jargony. But, as Pinker argues, if that were always the case, there'd never be any clear writing in journals at all and yet there is, sometimes side-by-side with something unintelligible.

That makes sense. I've read a few academics whose work for other academics is stylistically awful and/or unintelligible, but when they explain it to a regular newspaper, etc, make perfect sense. And I see that with the people I work with. When they explain it to me, it's very clear, but when they try to write it in an article, it's not.


I've also read accounts of academics who claim the reviewers insist they cram in more "theory" whether it really needs it or not. That is probably a different issue than just bad writing, although writing clearly about abstractions and meta-issues is hard so it's a related problem, perhaps.

I also suspect, although am not remotely enough of an expert to say this conclusively, that a huge portion of academic writing - and published writing in general - only exists because the author is required to publish stuff to keep their job. That's not a remotely original hypothesis. Lots of people smarter and more well-read on the subject have suggested that.

I've certainly read a lot of philosophy or religion things things that made me think "this could have been three sentences" or "this is a very long-winded way of saying something that ought to be damn obvious." Maybe I just don't get it. But again, people a lot smarter than me have suggested that.

The humanities and social sciences are mocked for this sort of thing, with some justification, but I know that the "harder sciences" struggle with it too. There's the "replication crisis" and a shit-ton of clinical trials that don't really prove anything at all, and not just in psychology, but in oncology, cardiology, etc. I've head from a number of doctors who say that certain academic medical centers tend to want to publish something on every case they do whether or not it's actually novel.

And, of course, industry wants to be able to say "we have X number of peer-reviewed papers that support our product," but sometimes they know the evidence isn't actually strong and they're just hoping that nobody is going to read all of those papers very carefully.

[Hot Pepsi]

The phrase "it could be argued" is now completely meaningless when one thinks about it, because any nonsense could be argued. And is.

(tbf I think HP is right on this. Academic writing is often terrible. A great arena for buzzword bingo.)

You're right, but I find that it's a useful way of saying "I recognize that this is an issue but I don't feel qualified to discuss it at length." Nef called me out on that, so I provided some examples of people who've thought about it in more depth.

[S. aureus]

In my field (chemistry) many academic articles are terribly written. Some aren't. I've always just viewed it mostly as demonstrating that skill in chemistry is not well correlated with skill in writing. There's also an additional hurdle that many of these articles aren't written in the writers native tongue.

[ad hoc]

Academic writing is indeed terrible, but that doesn't mean that university people are bad writers. You can find examples of academics who write unreadable articles in journals, but when they are allowed to write in a freer way (for example in books, or in things like the LRB or so on) they are superb at it.

[Patrick Thistle]

The phrase "it could be argued" is now completely meaningless when one thinks about it, because any nonsense could be argued. And is.

(tbf I think HP is right on this. Academic writing is often terrible. A great arena for buzzword bingo.)

[Hot Pepsi]

Why? And when you say "it could be argued" do you want to argue it, or not?

I didn't think this was remotely controversial. Lots of people have written or talked about it.* It's also just my own experience having to read a lot of scientific journals and edit the work of people who are clever and well-educated and have gone on to do jobs only open to the clever and well-educated.

On the other side of the question, lots of people that I, at least, think of as great writers didn't learn it at university, including a few contributors to this forum.

Of course, Shakespeare didn't go to college (as far as we know). Neither did Malcolm X. Or Homer. Or Plato. Or anyone at all until around 1200 years ago.

Paste, among others, made a listicle about it
https://www.pastemagazine.com/books/...-from-college/


*More:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/wh...id=gen_sign_in

https://areomagazine.com/2020/07/06/...at-hurts-them/

https://medium.com/swlh/why-cant-aca...e-82e54725b076

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page...ng-so-academic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AN2tbfSGm4

[Hot Pepsi]

I was replying to your first question, and suggesting that UK journalism is riven with nepotism.

I see. So a bit like American megachurches.

[ooh aah]

I don't mean to suggest that people who didn't go to university can't be good journalists. There was a time when lots of great journalists started out working for the papers as kids and worked their way up. And it could be argued, I think, that university education is the enemy of good writing right now.

I was replying to your first question, and suggesting that UK journalism is riven with nepotism.

[Nefertiti2]

And it could be argued, I think, that university education is the enemy of good writing right now.

Why? And when you say "it could be argued" do you want to argue it, or not?

[Hot Pepsi]

Family functions usually

I don't mean to suggest that people who didn't go to university can't be good journalists. There was a time when lots of great journalists started out working for the papers as kids and worked their way up. And it could be argued, I think, that university education is the enemy of good writing right now.

[ooh aah]

Where do they find the people who write those articles? Did they go to university?

Family functions usually

[Hot Pepsi]

Yeah, this is one where all Peter Andre cares about is getting a headline (I doubt he gives a fuck about Harry either way) and all the Express care about is finding someone to have a pop at Harry. It's like one of the mutually beneficial relationships between animals.

Where do they find the people who write those articles? Did they go to university?

[Sean of the Shed]

Yeah, this is one where all Peter Andre cares about is getting a headline (I doubt he gives a fuck about Harry either way) and all the Express care about is finding someone to have a pop at Harry. It's like one of the mutually beneficial relationships between animals.

Parasite and host.

[Etienne]

Yeah, this is one where all Peter Andre cares about is getting a headline (I doubt he gives a fuck about Harry either way) and all the Express care about is finding someone to have a pop at Harry. It's like one of the mutually beneficial relationships between animals.

[Hot Pepsi]

Peter Andre is a celebrity rather than a media type though isn't he? A really pisspoor celebrity admitted.

I'd argue that the line between "celebrity" and "media type" is blurry these days. Certainly, the UK tabloid press doesn't recognize that distinction.

Given that there is apparently no longer a sharp line between "fourth-rate gameshow host" and "leader of the most powerful empire on the planet," I guess that's to be expected.