Ask HN: Why is academic language so redundant?
4 comments
There are multiple reasons.
It's hard to write up a scientific report, and condense all the thing you want to say, and get the details and nuances correct.
It's also hard to write well. Look at all the people who go to classes and workshops to become better authors, and that's for a field where you might get paid if you write well. But "able to write well" isn't one of the things likely to give tenure or a promotion.
There are innumerable papers urging scientists to become better writers. But why should they? Where's the real pressure to also include the writing quality as a way to judge a paper.
"Oh, I'm sorry Herr Turing, but your paper on computability isn't up to our literary qualities. We recommend you work with a ghostwriter or writing coach."?
And yes, some papers do get that response, but it's rare, and mostly for non-native speakers who don't know the journal's language that well.
Then, yes, there are people who write that way because they believe that stilted and opaque language is the correct style.
Or there's the Sokal affair, where a journal accepted "an article liberally salted with nonsense".
On the other hand, you are also not the expected audience. While this isn't related to the quotes you gave, in general it takes time to know what everyone in the field is expected to know. Many of the dense or complex parts might be built on ideas that the expected reader will understand, but you might not. Or from the other perspective, I've read papers where the author goes on and on about some basic idea, and I'm mentally yelling "get on with it!"
You might try reading papers from Science or Nature, often available in print form at a good city library or local college library. Those are both cutting-edge and often clearly written.
It's hard to write up a scientific report, and condense all the thing you want to say, and get the details and nuances correct.
It's also hard to write well. Look at all the people who go to classes and workshops to become better authors, and that's for a field where you might get paid if you write well. But "able to write well" isn't one of the things likely to give tenure or a promotion.
There are innumerable papers urging scientists to become better writers. But why should they? Where's the real pressure to also include the writing quality as a way to judge a paper.
"Oh, I'm sorry Herr Turing, but your paper on computability isn't up to our literary qualities. We recommend you work with a ghostwriter or writing coach."?
And yes, some papers do get that response, but it's rare, and mostly for non-native speakers who don't know the journal's language that well.
Then, yes, there are people who write that way because they believe that stilted and opaque language is the correct style.
Or there's the Sokal affair, where a journal accepted "an article liberally salted with nonsense".
On the other hand, you are also not the expected audience. While this isn't related to the quotes you gave, in general it takes time to know what everyone in the field is expected to know. Many of the dense or complex parts might be built on ideas that the expected reader will understand, but you might not. Or from the other perspective, I've read papers where the author goes on and on about some basic idea, and I'm mentally yelling "get on with it!"
You might try reading papers from Science or Nature, often available in print form at a good city library or local college library. Those are both cutting-edge and often clearly written.
> Where's the real pressure to also include the writing quality as a way to judge a paper.
I think it's really a thing between necessary complexity and unnecessary complexity. Unnecessary complexity makes papers harder to read. I'll hypothesize being harder to read makes you harder to cite. A final, due-diligence editing pass to simplify statements and catch errors should not take very long.
> Then, yes, there are people who write that way because they believe that stilted and opaque language is the correct style.
That is what I'm getting at. Some of the papers sounded like they were written to hit a page-count (well, i assume college does train that style). They were organized well, but the writing seemed like there was actual effort put in to jumble things up. Lists of similar statements ("A1 does A2, B1 does B2, C1 does C2") jumbled up to provide variety ("It is shown that A1 does A2, B2 is done by B1, C1 does C2"). It is harder to write and read.
Redundant statements are like unsimplified fractions. They bother me.
> It's also hard to write well.
It is. Not asking for a gripping paper.
Thing is, imagining the paper to be a hierarchy, the top level structure is usually fine, but at the sentence level, things break down. There are needless permutations and additions. Unnecessary permutations can be resolved by looking at statement relations (similar things should look similar). Unnecessary additions can be removed by examining whether words are necessary, once their context is known.
It's just rubbing my min-maxer heart the wrong way. It makes taking notes harder due to parsing difficulties.
I think it's really a thing between necessary complexity and unnecessary complexity. Unnecessary complexity makes papers harder to read. I'll hypothesize being harder to read makes you harder to cite. A final, due-diligence editing pass to simplify statements and catch errors should not take very long.
> Then, yes, there are people who write that way because they believe that stilted and opaque language is the correct style.
That is what I'm getting at. Some of the papers sounded like they were written to hit a page-count (well, i assume college does train that style). They were organized well, but the writing seemed like there was actual effort put in to jumble things up. Lists of similar statements ("A1 does A2, B1 does B2, C1 does C2") jumbled up to provide variety ("It is shown that A1 does A2, B2 is done by B1, C1 does C2"). It is harder to write and read.
Redundant statements are like unsimplified fractions. They bother me.
> It's also hard to write well.
It is. Not asking for a gripping paper.
Thing is, imagining the paper to be a hierarchy, the top level structure is usually fine, but at the sentence level, things break down. There are needless permutations and additions. Unnecessary permutations can be resolved by looking at statement relations (similar things should look similar). Unnecessary additions can be removed by examining whether words are necessary, once their context is known.
It's just rubbing my min-maxer heart the wrong way. It makes taking notes harder due to parsing difficulties.
You have little to no experience in writing a scientific paper, little experience in reading papers, and I don't know your field or if you're reading bottom-tier papers or high quality papers.
I'm therefore not sure what to make of your response. Is it just a complaint to the universe or do you want something specific?
Because I can complain about crappy papers until the cows come home. But that's a well-worn story that doesn't interest anyone. Even me. Everyone complains about it. Here's a 1962 paper in my field on the very topic: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/c160006a001 . Here's a book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Science-Robert-Goldbort/dp/03... . Here's a cartoon from PhD Comics: http://www.nature.com/scitable/ebooks/english-communication-... (or see http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=405 for a translation guide; PhD comics touches on this topic often).
I'm therefore not sure what to make of your response. Is it just a complaint to the universe or do you want something specific?
Because I can complain about crappy papers until the cows come home. But that's a well-worn story that doesn't interest anyone. Even me. Everyone complains about it. Here's a 1962 paper in my field on the very topic: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/c160006a001 . Here's a book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Science-Robert-Goldbort/dp/03... . Here's a cartoon from PhD Comics: http://www.nature.com/scitable/ebooks/english-communication-... (or see http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=405 for a translation guide; PhD comics touches on this topic often).
Complaint to the universe mostly.
I do have very little domain knowledge. The thing that vexes me is that the "errors" made are consistent across the papers I've been reading. Most of them are in the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, which is a collection of 40 odd papers trying to lay down the foundations of the field, so I'll go out on a hunch to say that these are decent papers from a reasonable subset of authors across fields (sociology, ethnography, expert systems, cognitive psychology, etc.).
Now if the issues are consistent, there must be reasons they crop up again and again. It could be that there's a good underlying reason I'm missing. It could be that the academic environment trains people to write papers in this way. It could be that it's just the papers I've been reading that exhibit these issues. It could be that the difficulty of writing academically causes people to write in this manner. Without domain knowledge, I just cannot tell, but I would like to know.
For example, as a specific issue which is understandable to me, putting clear statements in question ("the sky may be blue"). Statements need to be defensible, strong statements are hard to defend, ergo authors resort to qualifying everything as 'potentially'.
A specific issue that is hard to understand for me is obfuscating similar statements. Semantic meaning is retained, but the parse tree looks different. The statements have clear relation (A->B B->C, or A->B, C->D,...), and obfuscation is more work than just writing out their relation. Why then, do authors do that?
My questions were roughly, "Are there writing issues in most academic papers?" (Seems like yes), "are these specific recurrent items issues, or conscious decisions? If they are issues, why do they arise? Is they are conscious decisions, what motivates them?".
Sorry if it's bothersome, but since I'm a relative novice, my questions aren't necessarily clear. Maybe I'll have a chance to get an answer for some of the other questions later on as I'm more experienced. Thank you by the way.
I do have very little domain knowledge. The thing that vexes me is that the "errors" made are consistent across the papers I've been reading. Most of them are in the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, which is a collection of 40 odd papers trying to lay down the foundations of the field, so I'll go out on a hunch to say that these are decent papers from a reasonable subset of authors across fields (sociology, ethnography, expert systems, cognitive psychology, etc.).
Now if the issues are consistent, there must be reasons they crop up again and again. It could be that there's a good underlying reason I'm missing. It could be that the academic environment trains people to write papers in this way. It could be that it's just the papers I've been reading that exhibit these issues. It could be that the difficulty of writing academically causes people to write in this manner. Without domain knowledge, I just cannot tell, but I would like to know.
For example, as a specific issue which is understandable to me, putting clear statements in question ("the sky may be blue"). Statements need to be defensible, strong statements are hard to defend, ergo authors resort to qualifying everything as 'potentially'.
A specific issue that is hard to understand for me is obfuscating similar statements. Semantic meaning is retained, but the parse tree looks different. The statements have clear relation (A->B B->C, or A->B, C->D,...), and obfuscation is more work than just writing out their relation. Why then, do authors do that?
My questions were roughly, "Are there writing issues in most academic papers?" (Seems like yes), "are these specific recurrent items issues, or conscious decisions? If they are issues, why do they arise? Is they are conscious decisions, what motivates them?".
Sorry if it's bothersome, but since I'm a relative novice, my questions aren't necessarily clear. Maybe I'll have a chance to get an answer for some of the other questions later on as I'm more experienced. Thank you by the way.
One thing strikes me as odd is how much redundancy and complexity is in those statements. Qualifiers that cancel each other, sentences that mean little (e.g., "We may have to consider all important aspects"...why wouldn't you?), nested layers of negation ('Most unlikely not un-important'), and statements rephrasing the statement before it just slightly.
Since I'm not an academic, and I don't write papers, I'm wondering, is there a purpose for this (e.g., "papers must be written defensively to be published, ergo they must make everything explicit"), or is it just authors' linguistic tomfoolery?
Another thing that interests me is whether this is true for all fields, or whether there's differences in clarity of writing between them?