{"id":1047,"date":"2012-04-26T08:05:19","date_gmt":"2012-04-26T08:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/?p=1047"},"modified":"2012-04-26T13:14:34","modified_gmt":"2012-04-26T13:14:34","slug":"wordy-wooden-weak-verbed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/2012\/04\/26\/wordy-wooden-weak-verbed\/","title":{"rendered":"Wordy, wooden, weak-verbed"},"content":{"rendered":"

A piece in today’s Times Higher<\/em><\/a>, on the flaws of academic writing styles, struck a chord with me.\u00a0 It\u00a0says:<\/p>\n

If you have ever needlessly added the term “Foucauldian” to a journal article or bludgeoned readers by starting an epic sentence with reference to the “post-Mendel application of Lamarck’s apparently superseded scientific theory by non-empirical social scientists”, then you have followed the trend for “wordy, wooden, weak-verbed” writing that dominates academic prose.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When editing text from scientists I seem to be forever adding verbs to sentences, or teasing apart dense clusters of adjectival nouns. I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me, so it was nice to see that I am not alone in struggling to read that kind of writing.<\/p>\n

Of course when you are trying to boil down a 3,000 word article into a thick 1500 syrup, for Nature<\/em> or similar, then the style can end up spare and unforgiving. Authors burn off any excess verbiage in order to meet the demands of the prestige journal.<\/p>\n

When you are unconstrained by word limits, though,\u00a0why not\u00a0try putting\u00a0back some of those missing connecting words that aid comprehension. Strive for sentences in the style<\/p>\n

The cat sat on the mat<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Avoid\u00a0what the Times <\/em>Higher article describes as “dull titles, formulaic structures, dull, passive prose and multisyllabic, abstract nouns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A piece in today’s Times Higher, on the flaws of academic writing styles, struck a chord with me.\u00a0 It\u00a0says: If you have ever needlessly added the term “Foucauldian” to a journal article or bludgeoned readers by starting an epic sentence … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}