Fall 2023: Post 02 - Academic Writing

I teach academic writing at college. This is the style of writing that students have to do to earn good grades in their various college courses and to eventually earn their degree. Unfortunately, too many of my students don't seem to understand what academic writing is, so I want to provide my definition. However, sometimes it's easier to explain what something isn't rather than what it is.

Fortunately, I have a fine example of poor academic writing from one of my favorite bloggers: Josh Bernoff, who writes the blog Josh Bernoff, based on his book Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean. Mr. Bernoff is a professional writer and editor, and his blog talks about how to be a better writer than you already are.

In a recent blog post "This impenetrable opening paragraph violates every writing principle simultaneously", Bernoff gives an example of the kind of prose that good writers avoid, and as it happens, his example was written by two university academics: Michael M. Crow, president of Arizona State University, and William B. Dabars, an ASU professor and administrator. Bernoff quotes the entire opening paragraph from their recently published book The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of American Higher Education:

Building on the arguments of our previous foray into this topic, this book envisions the emergence of the Fifth Wave in American higher education—a league of colleges and universities, spearheaded initially by a subset of large-scale public research universities, unified in their resolve to accelerate positive social outcomes through the seamless integration of world-class knowledge production with cutting-edge technological innovation and institutional cultures dedicated to the advancement of accessibility to the broadest possible demographic representative of the socioeconomic and intellectual diversity of our nation. The Fifth Wave primarily augments and complements the set of American research universities, which, for reasons that will readily become apparent, we term the Fourth Wave, but will also comprise networks of heterogeneous colleges and universities whose frameworks are underpinned by discovery and knowledge production, and institutional actors from business and industry, government agencies and laboratories, and organizations in civil society.

This is not the kind of writing I will teach students this term; yet, this is what many of my students think academic writing is all about: dense, jargon-laden prose that only book nerds and specialists can plow through. Sadly, too many academicians write like this. I suppose they think it makes them sound smarter and more educated, or perhaps that's the style they learned from their professors and mentors. Whatever the case, this is NOT the style of writing that I teach. Rather, I teach that the best academic writing is clear, engaging, and difficult only when the material is difficult — and as it happens, the material Crow and Dabars are discussing is not really that difficult. I teach writing in the style of Bernoff's revision of the above paragraph. Bernoff says it this way:

American universities have reinvented themselves four times. It’s time to do it again. 

We propose a league of educational institutions, led by a few visionary public research universities. They will adopt a set of core principles: the pursuit of positive social outcomes, continued excellence in research, and adoption of videoconferencing and other technological classroom and networking tools. And they must have as their overarching goal the desire to empower and expand opportunities for students of all races and classes. This is only possible when educational institutions of all kinds work together with leaders from industry, government, and other institutions.

Isn't that better? I think so, and I'll bet you do, too. This sounds as if real people wrote it — not a couple of robots from the basement of the university library. Bernoff sounds more real because he uses real language. For instance, he avoids puffed-up jargon when simpler language says it just as well. He uses first person we (the book has two authors, so plural) instead of this book as in the original version. Many academicians tell students not to use first person — I or we — in academic writing, but that's the first step towards stilted, turgid prose (you're reading this on a computer, so google turgid if you don't know what it means. Make it a habit to learn new words.). I will teach you how to use first-person in your academic writing. It really does make for more readable prose.

However, I also remind my students that some of their college professors don't like first-person in academic writing. For those professors, students should write uglier prose like the above, and those teachers will have to read it. That seems fair punishment.

Academic writing is a mainstay of Western intellectual culture, especially academic culture and conversation. In their book Clear and Simple as the Truth (2011), authors Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner call this kind of writing the Classic style, and their title pretty much captures their point about this style of writing: it is as clear and simple as the truth. As they say it, "a natural language is sufficient to express truth; and the writer knows the truth before he puts it into language" (3). 

(Teaching moment: note that I just used an outside resource to support my point about academic writing. First, I paraphrased Thomas and Turner's definition of the Classic style, and then I used a quote from their book to further support, amplify, explain, and expand the point I just made. In both cases, I documented my source. Of course, I told you the source of my quote, but even when I paraphrased in my own words, I told you the source of my idea. Note also that I made my point in my words first (academic writing is a mainstay …), and then I supported my point with outside sources. If you read carefully, you'll see that this is the main pattern in the academic essays we will read this term: make your point then support it with outside authority. You should use this pattern. Also note that I did not use strict MLA style to document my source. This is a blog post, so I used hyperlinks to point you to my sources. MLA does not yet use hyperlinks, though it does use URLs on the Works Cited page, so I reserve MLA style for academic essays.) 

So here is the lesson about academic writing: learn something worth someone else knowing, and then share that knowledge in language that makes it as easy as possible for your reader to understand. That's academic writing as I teach it. It's what I try to do in my blog posts and academic essays. The writer should always work harder than the reader.

I have written this post for two main reasons: first, to explain what we're studying this term, and second, to introduce you to blogging in the college classroom. I use blogging as a space for writing that is less formal than most academic writing while still trying to be learned and intelligent. Blogging is a step up — or two steps up — from most social media such as texting but more casual than academic papers. It's a good middle ground where we can discuss academic issues without dressing up, but without dumbing down, either. Note that I cited my sources above and even provided a link so that you can access the original documents that I used. I expect the same of your posts.

I also expect you to leave comments on your colleagues' posts, so learn how by leaving a comment for me in this post. Make a substantive comment. "This is so true" and "I agree" are not substantive comments, unless you clarify why this post is true or false or why you agree or disagree with it. Expand the conversation. Be intelligent and thoughtful. As a writer, your job is to bring value to the reader. If you don't do that, then you wasted the reader's time.

If you can't figure out how to leave a comment, google "post comments on blogger". Google knows the answer and explains things in language that makes it easy to understand. Google Help is actually a pretty good model for academic prose, or in Thomas and Turner's words, the Classic style. Pay attention to how Google does it: they have the knowledge, and they share it in easy to understand language. You should strive to do that: learn something valuable and share it with others. That's what writers do. Anything else is bullshit.