I read a short dialogue with the previously-mentioned Frederick Hess, in which he complains about researchers intentionally obfuscating their ideas behind a wall of jargon. He argues that plain writing, using diction that is clear and precise, is the ideal way to present ideas. Anything else is grandiose and an attempt at an appeal to authority. While I don’t agree with several details in that discussion, or the flippant attacks hidden among the core of his argument, there is insight worth exploring.
On Clarity
Writing for the sake of the reader (rather than for the sake of showing off) forces writers to think, “Will this be clear to anyone but me?”
To write effectively, you must first have a goal in mind. The goal often relates to the audience: an idea or impression you want them to understand, or a feeling you wish to evoke. Matching your goal with the audience lets you craft an approach and style that is best suited to accomplish that goal. There’s a reason that most academic papers are not written in haiku: That would not be a good way of communicating details and nuance in a niche research field.1An incredibly fun exercise would be summarizing an academic paper as a haiku or other limited writing format, but the paper itself does have to exist first. It’s also why age-specific texts exist, and why fiction genres have conventions and sub-genres. They help match a writer to an audience, and then the details of how the writer approaches their story is informed by their particular goal and sense of style.
In the quote above, Hess is specifically considering exposition of research topics. The goal and audience are assumed: Communicate new ideas in education to policy-makers, administrators, and teachers. This eliminates forms of writing that are often used for self-expression or entertainment, so we can focus on different aspects of the author’s approach. Their writing is meant to affect and direct the world of education; attempting to do so by posing as impressive and verbose, rather than allowing the merit of their idea to be clearly judged, is a disservice to their end goal and audience. So, they need a more refined sense of humility, a direct and honest tone, and an understanding of what concepts are broadly understood compared to those that may need to be explained in practical terms.
If your goal is to be clear or your goal is served by being clear, then write with the necessary clarity. Use analogies, avoid jargon, and be honest about the practicalities and promises of the idea in question. It’s easy to fall into the trap of persuasion or posturing, but remember that if your idea is truly worth presenting, it should be presented in a way befitting its value.
As Hess puts it:
And, if you can’t find a way to say it clearly, odds are that your insight isn’t nearly as insightful as you initially thought.
On Practice
A big problem is that many academics have never spent much time working on their writing.
I’ll broaden this quote: Many people have never spent much time working on their writing.
We relate to each other through writing. We compose emails, send text messages, post our musings online, and create documentation and slide shows, all with the goal of sharing information in some way. Yet we rarely break out of our initial draft of thoughts to consider how our instincts could be improved, or take a few minutes (or hours, or days, depending on the scope) to reread and edit to ensure the final product actually benefits ourselves and the audience. Most people don’t think about their writing as something they could, or should, improve.
Writing is a tool and skill hidden in plain sight. The final result in many disciplines, the actual representation of an idea seen by the world, is a piece of writing. Every organization uses written records to maintain information, and that writing needs to represent an intention as accurately as possible. Given how often we write, and the importance of writing to the communication and implementation of ideas, it’s sensible to push for improving relevant writing abilities in nearly every discipline.
A well-functioning organization ensures its members learns every tool they need to do their work. This often comes in the form of initial onboarding where they provide time and resources to build foundational knowledge and practice using those tools, and may include ongoing education to explore new approaches in a given field. If there is mission-critical or dangerous work, it’s useful to create a physically and mentally safe environment to practice, make mistakes, be assessed, and learn. For example, the graduate program Erin is in has students with varying levels of expertise in biology and computer science. The biologists are required to learn enough computer science to begin their work and grow into it with experience, and the computational folks do the same with biology. This happens in their first year before they begin their dissertation projects, because you need a starting point to be successful.
Why not give time to build writing skills as well, no matter the field? If the main way anyone will ever experience your thoughts is through writing, you should ensure your writing is able to fully represent those ideas.
On Care
Your work cannot speak for itself unless it’s presented in a way that can resonate with an audience. Impenetrable writing—due to poor diction, clunky sentence structure, unclear organization, or a number of other style elements—shows that you don’t value your idea or the time of those who seek to understand you. An idea can only be as strong and intelligible as you allow it to be via its presentation; if you don’t improve your ability to present, you are failing your ideas.
Writing with care encompasses several dimensions. It means caring enough about what you have to say to take the time to write at all, and then to care enough beyond that to write it well. It means respecting language by avoiding unnecessary cliches or vague usage that fails to properly illustrate your thoughts. It means seeking out words and phrases that match your ideas beyond your first impulse. It means finding a balance of information density that fits your intended audience, allowing them to gather the full meaning of a concept without wasting their time. It means choosing a format that is appropriately accessible. It means organizing, deleting, and rewriting. It means striving to improve by engaging with and analyzing writing that you both admire and abhor. It means gathering feedback and receiving it with grace.
Caring about what you do takes time, but writing has such an outsized impact in the world that it’s a worthwhile skill to fully develop. It gives you the tools to think with clarity, and then relate your thoughts to those around you. Writing is powerful, but just like any tool it must be wielded properly to maximize its effect. Learning to do so is worth the effort.
- 1An incredibly fun exercise would be summarizing an academic paper as a haiku or other limited writing format, but the paper itself does have to exist first.