‘Academic’ writing and ‘normal’ writing – really so different?

We write for various different reasons – to educate and inform, to record, to persuade and convince, sometimes to entertain. Above all, we write to communicate. As writers we have a message that we want to pass on to someone else, and as when passing a ball we want to make sure it gets to the recipient safely. Lob the ball two metres over your team-mate’s head and you only have yourself to blame when it bounces out of play. Toss your reader a load of impossible-to-follow gibberish and you cannot expect them to grasp what you’re trying to tell them. I can’t think of many modes of writing to which all this doesn’t apply.

A large part of most academics’ workload involves writing for various purposes, and these outputs mostly fall within the definition of what’s commonly termed ‘academic writing’. For many, the writing style that has come to be associated with academic writing is more or less synonymous with sophisticated and often-arcane prose peppered with recondite terms, highly-technical language, and lengthy multi-part sentences – often ill-structured – whose numerous subordinate clauses introduce and juxtapose several abstruse concepts (see what I’ve done here?). It never opts for a short, simple word if a longer, more high-falutin’ one is available. Why just ‘use’ something, when you could utilise it instead? It’s an exclusive form of writing that confers membership of a club on the relative few who can understand it, and excludes lesser mortals.

Why would you write like that?

I have a theory about how and why this approach to academic writing has come to pass. I think it stems from the fact that most people’s first-ever experience of academic writing is the undergraduate essay. Faced with writing something on a scholarly or technical subject about which we know very little, and aware that our efforts will be judged by intimidatingly-clever experts and rated at least in part on the basis of quantity as well as on quality, we scrabble around desperately for a means of filling five or six pages with prose that’s at least not transparently-obviously utter nonsense. We grasp desperately for the two complementary strategies available to us that seem to offer a solution; verbosity and obfuscation. And before very long we have produced pages of long-winded waffle, sparsely populated with the scant few facts that we have in our possession. It’s neither incisive nor easy to read, but that’s kind of the point – maybe Prof will just throw in the towel and give it the benefit of the doubt!

Assuming the essay scrapes a pass, we’re already well on the way to internalising the notion that clarity of meaning is not central to the discipline of academic writing, and that long-windedness is a winning strategy. We’re reinforced in this by what we see around us – everyone’s at it, so it must be the way forward.

Now I realise that the academic world can be quite protective of its mores and traditions, and I also understand that as a non-academic myself I’m on distinctly spongy ground if I launch unilaterally into a polemic against one of these. I could baldly state my claim that academic writing and plain-language writing (sometimes referred to as plain-English writing) should be synonymous, but my aim when blogging is always to inform and persuade, not to indulge in the sort of controversy-stirring that normally leads to mudslinging on Twitter. I can almost hear the cries of protest – my readers are intelligent and well educated, and they don’t need to be patronised!

So let’s explode the first myth; plain-language writing is not condescending to the reader. Don’t just take that from me – here’s what the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the major national funder of health and medical research in the US, has to say on the matter:

“Plain language is grammatically correct language that includes complete sentence structure and accurate word usage. Plain language is not unprofessional writing or a method of ‘dumbing down’ or ‘talking down’ to the reader.”

Lest we’re is any doubt (NIH is American, for example, and we all know they do things a bit differently over there), let’s consider the advice that the University of Leeds Library Service gives on the subject:

“Academic writing is clear, concise, focussed, structured and backed up by evidence. Its purpose is to aid the reader’s understanding. It has a formal tone and style, but it is not complex and does not require the use of long sentences and complicated vocabulary.”

Let’s deconstruct this slightly. They refer to ‘formal tone’, and that’s important. Plain language is always clear but its tone is often neutral, and it certainly doesn’t have to be – indeed often shouldn’t be – chatty. Contractions, for example, like ‘it’s’, ‘you’ll’ and ‘won’t’ are fine in this blog post, but definitely not okay in a journal paper or research proposal (I once saw a grant reviewer complain in their feedback about the single instance of ‘it’s’ that had slipped unnoticed past the final proof read).

And what of the statement that complicated vocabulary is unnecessary? Even though I’m not an academic, I’m not completely naïve here. I understand that academics write challenging stuff about difficult-to-understand topics. What if you’re writing a paper on the role of ryanodine receptors in the sarcoplasmic reticulum membrane, or a research proposal about singlet exciton fission in single-junction solar cells? Well, let me make my own suggestion here; the language used throughout the piece should only ever be as complex as it needs to be. Sure, there’s no easily-accessible synonym available for most technical terms, but don’t make it even harder for the reader by stitching them into long and rambling sentences, and surrounding them with other needlessly-complex words. And accept that while the ‘methodology’ section of the singlet exciton proposal will inevitably be pretty heavy going, the ‘impact’ section should be clear and straightforward.

The laws (well, writing-style rules) of Nature

I cannot think of a more convincing means of promoting the ‘use plain language’ message than to point out that it’s exactly what Nature tells its journal authors to do. Admittedly they don’t actually use the term ‘plain language’ – perhaps that would just be a bridge too far? But their guidance for authors is nevertheless based squarely around the very fundamentals of plain-language writing. Let’s take a look at it.

They start by reminding us that many of their readers will not be native English speakers. The likely degree of heterogeneity within almost any readership in this and other respects is certainly worth keeping in mind. Will non-specialists read your research proposal, for example, and perhaps lay readers too? Might mainstream-media journalists access your journal paper? Nature does go on to acknowledge that their journals are read mostly by professional scientists, and recommends that authors “avoid unnecessary simplification or didactic definitions”. As we saw above, it’s a misconception that either of these is a key feature of plain language, although of course a lay summary does need more by way of simplified ‘explainers’ than the main text will. But Nature also issues the following caveat: “However, many readers are outside the immediate discipline of the author(s), so clarity of expression is needed to achieve the goal of comprehensibility.” The second part of that sentence might seem so obvious as to not need stating, but it’s hard to disagree with.

Next comes another key tenet of plain-language writing – favouring use of the active rather than the passive voice: “Nature journals prefer authors to write in the active voice (‘we performed the experiment...’) as experience has shown that readers find concepts and results to be conveyed more clearly if written directly.” Few would claim that the passive voice should never be used (see what I did there?), but like vodka and profanity it’s best used only in moderation. This Grammarly blog post examines the difference between active and passive voice if you’re interested.

Nature continues: “We have also found that use of several adjectives to qualify one noun in highly technical language can be confusing to readers.” Well it just so happens that use of unnecessary adjectives is very much the antithesis of plain-language writing. Furthermore, “we encourage authors to ‘unpackage’ concepts and to present their findings and conclusions in simply constructed sentences.” Simply-constructed sentences are another fundamental characteristic of plain-language writing.

When it comes to high-falutin’ language, Nature is once again on right board: “Many papers submitted for publication in a Nature journal contain unnecessary technical terminology, unreadable descriptions of the work that has been done…” Plain language is specifically designed to be readable, and once again their guidance espouses some fundamental plain-language principles.

“Our journal subeditors and copyeditors edit the manuscript so that it is grammatically correct, logical, clear and concise. […] Of course, this process is assisted greatly if the authors have written the manuscript in a simple and accessible style…” Well, quite. Statements like this make me feel quite warm inside…

Pretty much every main aspect of plain-language writing gets a look in. “We ask authors to avoid jargon and acronyms where possible” – another key principle ticked off. They end by re-emphasising the importance of “clear and accessible writing”. Nature has in essence unpackaged plain-language writing, and instructed authors to write in plain language without actually using the term itself.

For my own part, I’ve come to realise that if something isn’t written clearly then it often means the writer doesn’t really understand it. As Einstein once said, “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.” In a research proposal, this is often because the writer is trying to describe and justify a research project that they have yet to plan out properly – they don’t actually know yet exactly what they’ll do, how they’ll do it, who will do what and when it will be done. How can anyone write clearly about something that doesn’t exist yet?

And what of ‘utilise’?

Usage and Abusage, Eric Partridge’s classic reference guide to good use of the English language, is uncompromising on this word’s lack of linguistic merit: “utilise is, 99 times out of 100, much inferior to use; the other one time it is merely inferior.” If ‘utilise’ does have a distinct meaning beyond being a more pretentious alternative to ‘use’, it’s perhaps to describe a situation where something is put to practical and effective use, maybe a use for which that item was not originally intended. For example: ‘the crow utilised an old skewer to retrieve the nut from the hole’. Even here though, ‘used’ would have done the job perfectly well.

So just do it!

It seems then that plain language isn’t just a minor sub-genre or writing style, to be dusted off and employed occasionally for things like lay summaries, press releases and study-participant information sheets. Rather, it’s an overarching set of principles that will benefit pretty much every mode of writing, and should certainly inform our approach to writing things like research proposals, journal papers and REF case studies. In fact, any form of writing where the aim is to convey a message clearly and convincingly to the reader. And you don’t just need to take my word for that.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and are in no way endorsed by my employer. Factual information and guidance are provided on a 'best-endeavour' basis and may become out of date over time. No responsibility can be taken for any action or inaction taken or not in respect of the content of this blog.