Why Academics Stink at Writing

Academics tend to employ an unnecessarily complicated writing style, dubbed “academese,” which is often incomprehensible even to their peers.

Consider this sentence: “Participants read assertions whose veracity was either affirmed or denied by the subsequent presentation of an assessment word.” This is an example of esoteric academic speak. With effort, you might perhaps untangle the intended meaning: “Participants read sentences, each followed by the word ‘true’ or ‘false’.”

So why do academics construct unwieldy, arcane sentences that even their peers struggle to comprehend? One theory, favored by people outside academia, suggests that incomprehensible writing attempts to give weight to flimsy or obvious ideas. Another theory posits that, due to the complexity of their subject matter, academics must develop a professional shorthand that only their peers understand and that makes their writing inaccessible to laypeople. A third theory ...