Thread by @Helenreflects

On writing good academic prose.
I just read this article on how to improve your academic writing, and it's full of good advice. I want to summarize some of that advice in a thread, adding some thoughts and ideas 1/
earlymoderntexts.com/assets/jfb/ben…

A lot of academic writing is really awful. The authors think that's because "Graduate students typically aspire to write the sort of prose they read in the leading journals in their disciplines" Emulation definitely plays a role, but it's not the whole story 2/

It isn't a disciplinary norm (in philosophy at least) to write well. It's nice when it happens, but rarely do papers get rejected for poor prose, unless it visibly looks like written by a person who speaks English as a second language (alas). So, if it sounds native speaker 3/

Then it's fine even if the prose is difficult to wade through. I see a lot of referee reports as editor, many of these R and R or minor revisions saying "Author should look at prose" almost as an aside for a typo-ridden and contorted paper. So, there's no gain writing well. 4/

Indeed, there may be a cost to writing well. If you express your ideas clearly then there is no hedging, no obfuscation to protect you. The referee now clearly sees what you're saying and can clearly disagree. 5/

Moreover, well written prose is sometimes just dismissed as "simplistic". I think, though this is more a hunch than a firm conviction, that if anything there is a penalty against clear writing. So on we go writing dreadful papers in long, contorted prose. 6/

Anyway, I still think it's important to write clearly. It is helpful for public philosophy. I've now almost finished co-editing (and this includes line-edits) a public philosophy book so with that in mind, here are some ideas/tips on how to write better academic prose 7/

On sentence length. Long sentences aren't a problem per se. Also, successions of short sentences make prose choppy and not necessarily easy to parse. But it's a problem if you have long sentence after long sentence. Best is to mix up long and short sentences. 8/

Passives. I do think personally that if you can avoid a passive sentence structure, do so. It is almost always better to change a passive sentence structure for an active one and really helps the prose 9/

Listicles. Beware of "Here we explain, explore, and understand" and other such lists which slow down reading terribly. Sometimes people try to simplify and then you get these duplets "explain and explore" "contend and understand" etc. Avoid. Just pick one 10/

"Adverbs are better than adjectives" this is interesting as in fiction writing the advice is the opposite. I think it depends. Sometimes an adverb works well, sometimes an adjective is better. It's nice to have a mix 11/

It is really helpful to read your text out loud, or even have it read out by text-to-speech to you in that deadpan voice, to see if your text flows. 12/

People may smile at this but I find the Hemingway editor very helpful, just as a first pass for reading level. It flags long, difficult sentences in red, for instance. I want to avoid too much red together in a paragraph. Hemingway can signal problems 13/
hemingwayapp.com

Also important: the inherent musicality of the prose. Le Guin talks about this for fiction. But it is also important for academic writing--you can develop an inner ear for prose that sings, using things like alliteration (subtly!), judicious use of commas and --dashes 14/

Maybe redundant to say but: line-edit your prose. Just look at the finished draft, line by line, then edit each sentence for clarity. Most manuscripts I see of academic papers don't look like they've gone through that process. Line-editing is more than checking for typos 15/

It means looking at the text, paragraph by paragraph, and even sentence by sentence, to see if it makes sense, and to look for alternatives to say things more clearly and crisply. /end