Helen Sword rips the veil off one of the worst kept secrets in all of academia: Most academic writing is just plain awful. Jargon-filled, abstract, impersonal, sleep-inducing.What makes Sword's Stylish Academic Writing different is that she has data to back up her claims. She studied five hundred recent articles from academic journals evenly spread over ten different disciplines. For example, she actually counted first-person pronouns (historians being culpable for using the fewest) and abstract nouns (e.g., nominalization--those in higher ed being most guilty of this infraction).The good news is--the news is not all bad! Science writers actually used the pronouns "I" and "we" quite a bit. Historians rarely used abstract nouns.There was hope on another front. Sword not only studied journal articles but also the advice found in the guidelines for writers issued by the journals. They all tended to advocate: The three C's--clarity, coherence, conciseness Including some short and some long sentences Plain English Precision Active verbs Telling a storyThere was, however, less consensus on: Personal pronouns Careful use of jargon Personal voice Creative expression Non-standard structure Engaging titlesIn another twist, she analyzes the writing itself in the guidelines for writers the journals created. Again, on the one hand we get a mix of creative use of metaphor, humor, word play and other engaging techniques, while on the other hand we find styles of writing that are, yes, academic and stodgy.Conclusion: yes, convention remains a powerful force that shapes most academic writing. But within every discipline there is latitude for and actual published examples of good, interesting, stylish writing. Under the guise of writing advice, this book recommends things that I have been taught to be bad intellectual practice. One of these is flat misrepresentation. The summary of Jonathan Culler's defense of Judith Butler's prose on pg. 156, for example, completely misrepresents what Culler is saying: he doesn't say that Butler presents a "merry-go-round," prosodically, but rather tries to help the reader with abstruse concepts by repeating them several times. There are a number of other serious problems here. Many of the writers Sword cites are public intellectuals on the Richard Dawkins or Stephen Greenblatt level; simply put, these are writers who are trying to engage a broader public, and are as a result writing in their recent work in a less rigorous style. Which is exactly the point, maybe, about scholars at that point in their careers--although Greenblatt in particular is a much more nuanced and (yes) jargon-creating writing than Sword gives him credit for being. This is to his credit, not to his detriment. Saying that academic writing is bad isn't even shooting fish in a barrel--or if it is, it's doing so with orbital missile systems. Part of the reading for this is that 90% of all writing is bad; if anything, academics are more reflective about this than other writers. With that nevertheless as given, Sword recommends many things--jokes, overly-personal anecdotes, elaborate figurative language--that reviewers have told me to specifically remove from my journal articles. By citing figures at the peak of their careers, she is citing people whose work is often edited in different ways. With that said, there are good points. Derrida and Foucault tend to be clearer and cannier than those who cite them excessively; this might be why they were the two most-cited academics of their generation. Why we need someone else saying this is beyond me.The most useful points of this book, its occasional listing of concrete suggestions for improving writing, would most usefully have been printed on a two-sided laminated sheet of paper, which might be pinned up by one's computer. There is a lot of verbiage, star-fucking, and a kind of curdled distaste for people trying to do new things--which often relates in awkward prose, often the site of the unformed but fascinated idea--getting in the way of this laminated sheet. This twaddle is coupled with a lack of genuinely new ideas. Telling someone to ask what the "main point" of their article is is something I learned around the third grade; although it is nice to be reminded to do this from time to time, it is not pleasant to do so in prose this high-handed and, frequently, cliched ("clarity and complexity are bedfellows, not rivals," "An effective first paragraph...must...make the reader want to keep reading," "captures our imagination," etc. etc. ad infinitum.)The hell of it is: if you skim this like a Florida airboat, you will probably become aware of three or four categories of writing improvement that might help you. Write these down, pin 'em to your desk, and forget how Stephen Greenblatt wrote his articles. You have your own ideas to struggle with, and your own voice to find. You're not going to find that in this Whitman's Sampler of cack-handedly obvious cliches.
What do You think about Stylish Academic Writing (2012)?
Strongly recommend to any academics who wants real people to read and care about their research.
—Nicholas
Who says academics can't write books and articles that people would actually want to read?
—anitah23
Not sure if she follows her own advice but tips are just as good maybe better than others.
—chickwithbrains
