Zombies demand your attention. So when I saw an op-ed entitled "Zombie Nouns," I had to read it. In the op-ed, Helen Sword reminds academics of the hazards of nominalizations—nouns, like 'nominalization', forged by soldering an ending like '-ization' or '-tion' or '-ism' onto another word. I liked the op-ed. It reanimated my desire to make my writing more stylish. As luck would have it, the blurb below the op-ed casually mentions that Sword's latest book is Stylish Academic Writing.
I bought Sword's book. I read it. And now I'm writing this post to prevent you from doing either. The book is a waste of time and money.
To be fair, I'm being slightly unfair. The book's not a total waste, and some academics might find it liberating. In particular, the book might liberate academics who write unstylish prose only because they think their colleagues demand it of them. Sword claims to have met such people. But for the rest of us, the book's not worth its sticker price or its reading time. I'll post a very brief summary of each chapter as a comment, so as not to take up space here.
I have two main complaints about the book. First, I didn't find any of Sword's advice particularly novel. I haven't read Strunk & White in a while, but I'll bet that almost all of her writing advice is contained in Strunk & White.
Second, Sword mostly ignores the legitimate reasons that academics lean on abstractions; stuff their sentences full of adjectives, preopositional phrases, and other qualifiers; use jargon; etc. Most of these reasons, I think, have to do with expressing nuanced ideas.
Take the title on this post as an example. It doesn't say what I mean. If I weren't following Sword's advice to use an engaging title, I'd entitle the post, "How to use your money suboptimally without improving your writing very much." The book's not really a waste of money. It's probably a poor use of money, but that's harder to defend than the claim that it's a suboptimal use of money. 'Suboptimal' is a precise word, and it conveys precisely what I want to say. Jargon often functions this way. Sword admits that jargon sometimes functions this way, but she is too ready to accuse academics of pomposity. Likewise, it's not that the book won't improve your writing at all. Sword does assemble helpful reminders. But the book won't improve your writing very much.
Sword and others would probably retort that the best academic writers convey complex ideas in simple language. I agree. But I think that Sword and other critics want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I do like one things about Sword's book: I personally find her suggestion to use concrete nouns to be a helpful heuristic. I write better sentences when I follow her advice. Sadly, that's the bit of advice that's freely available in "Zombie Nouns."
Which books on stylish academic writing have you found helpful? Which specific pieces of advice have you found helpful? Whose academic writing do you admire as particularly stylish, and why?
The single best piece of advice I can think of is: "tell a simple, intuitive story.". Sounds obvious, I know, but it's actually very hard to do and when one does it it really transforms how effectively one's ideas come across.
My favorites are probably:
Elizabeth Anderson: just awesome, end of story.
David Schmidtz: keeps things as simple and intuitive as possible.
Ryle: same, and love his grudge against footnotes (though I don't follow it in the least)
Posted by: Marcus Arvan | 08/02/2012 at 07:12 PM
Oh. Almost forgot. Here's my summary of her chapters, presented as evidence that the book isn't really worth your time. I did find her results from Chapter 2 to be interesting, but they won't improve anyone's writing.
1. Academic writing is often terrible. Sword decided to figure out why that was.
2. Sword analyzed 20 recent articles from each of ten different disciplines: medicine, evolutionary biology, computer science, higher education, psychology, anthropology, law, philosophy, history, and literary studies. She discovered that style varies significantly both within and between disciplines.
3. Academic writing guides agree on a few principles: write clearly and concisely; use short sentences; use plain English; be precise; use active verbs; tell a story. The guides disagree on other principles.
4. It's okay to use first person pronouns. Lots of people do it in all disciplines.
5. Sentences should use concrete nouns whenever possible. Avoid using abstraction nouns as the grammatical subject of a sentence. Subjects should be close to the main verb of a sentence. Don't clutter your sentences with too many adverbs, adjectives, or prepositional phrases. Minimize use of 'there', 'it', and forms of 'to be'.
6. You can make your article's titles both engaging and informative. They don't have to be boring.
7. Your opening sentence or paragraph should grab your reader's attention. To do this, you may need to deviate from disciplinary templates. The rest of your paper should hold the your reader's attention.
8. Even academic work can tell a story. People like stories.
9. Examples, anecdotes, case studies, fictional scenarios, figurative language, and allusions enliven texts.
10. Use jargon sparingly and wisely.
11. Think about the overall structure of your articles or books, and don't be afraid to deviate from standard disciplinary structures.
12. Different citation styles have different advantages and disadvantages. Some academics use footnotes and citations poorly.
13. Write clear, concise, informative, but lively abstracts. Explain complex ideas in clear language.
14. Be creative. One thing that spurs creativity is reading widely across disciplines.
15. Becoming a stylish writer requires using concrete language, making choices, and having courage.
Posted by: David Morrow | 08/02/2012 at 07:18 PM