Academic writing has a reputation for being a bit dry and only interested in the dissemination of abstract information. Concreteness, style, and vivacity often fall to the wayside. As Sword points out, much of this dryness is due to social structures, not deliberate mastery of the craft. This book teaches how to bring a sense of style to academic writing without compromising its informational purposes.
By examining 1,000 academic papers in ten different fields, Sword compiles a list of examples of good and bad practices. The style of writing is often dependent on one’s field of study. This style, in turn, is enforced culturally by educators and institutionally by editors of journals. Fortunately, by Sword’s analysis, many journals allow and encourage a lucid style. Why then does such a dry style persist among so many writers? People have been told, over and over again, that “this is just how it is.” Or they have been discouraged from taking risks by one or two people on dissertation or tenure committees.
Sword hopes to free us writers from those shadowy shackles by showing little ways to make communication more effective. There’s no inherent rule that academic writing has to be dry, and overly abstract writing is simply ineffective and bad, not helpful. Not every writer will feel freedom to try every suggested tool, but every reader should be able to come away with some new approach to try out. The biggest obstacles cited are fear and anxiety. The ten very different fields examined demonstrate style can be found everywhere – if we only would have the verve to use it.
The biggest shortcoming of this book lies in its format. I listened to it as an audiobook and found myself wanting to consult the examples visually. Many tangential pericopes fill the text – usually a good feature – but these were hard to follow audibly. I suspect reading the print version would solve this problem squarely.
Obviously, this book seeks to address communicators across many fields who write for academic audiences. Those who write for popular journals or newspapers may find this book of limited use. By using abundant examples, Sword’s study seeks to be relevant to basic sciences like medicine as much as the social sciences or even the humanities. When not used to excess but still not eschewed, style facilitates communication and makes academic studies full of more intrinsic impact. Though immensely important, academic words can lose lingering power by becoming drier than they have to be, but Sword teaches how to resuscitate them back to life.
Stylish Academic Writing
By Helen Sword
Narrated by Virginia Wolf
Copyright (c) 2012, 2018
Harvard University Press/Tantor Media
ISBN 9780674064485
ASIN B07G3CXPST
Recorded Time: 6:24
Genre: Writing/Communication
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