Stylish Academic Writing - Helen Sword 2012

A guide to the style guides
Style and substance

Academic writing, like university teaching, is what sociologist Paul Trowler calls a “recurrent practice,” one of the many routine tasks that most academics perform “habitually and in an unconsidered way,” with little thought as to how or why things might be done differently: “It is simply taken for granted that this is what we do around here.”¹ In recent years, with the advent of Preparing Future Faculty programs in the United States and faculty teaching certificates elsewhere, pedagogical training for academics has become something less of a novelty than it used to be. However, many early career academics still experience some version of the situation that I faced two decades ago when, freshly minted PhD in hand, I walked into my new department and was immediately presented with a list of the courses I had been assigned to teach in my first year. With no educational training and no explicitly developed pedagogical principles to call upon, I cobbled together courses that looked more or less exactly like the ones I had enrolled in as an undergraduate, and I delivered them in just the same way that they had been delivered to me, right down to the structure of my lectures and the wording of my exams. Occasionally I glanced around my department to see what my colleagues were up to; reassuringly, their practices mostly mirrored my own. Not until many years later did I discover that my university library was filled with row upon row of books devoted to topics such as student-centered learning and principles of course design—books that could have helped me become a more reflective, informed, and innovative teacher, had I only known that they existed.

The same is true with scholarly writing. For most academics, formal training on how to write “like a historian” or “like a biologist” begins and ends with the PhD, if it happens at all. For the remainder of our careers, we are left to rely on three main sources of guidance: our memories of what, if anything, our dissertation supervisors told us about good writing; occasional peer feedback on our work; and examples of recently published writing in the academic journals where we aspire to publish. All three tend to be forces for conservatism. Supervisors typically preach stylistic caution; they want their students to demonstrate mastery of disciplinary norms, not to push against disciplinary boundaries. Editors and referees, likewise, are often more intent on self-cloning than on genuine innovation or empowerment. Peer-reviewed publications, meanwhile, offer a range of stylistic models that are at best unadventurous and at worst downright damaging. Even the most prestigious international academic journals (as this book amply documents) may contain jargon-ridden, shoddily organized, sloppily argued, and syntactically imprecise prose. Academics who learn to write by imitation will almost inevitably pick up the same bad habits.

Of course, just as some academics become superb teachers despite their lack of formal training in higher education teaching, some researchers beat the odds and develop into superb writers. A few may even be fortunate enough to work with coauthors, mentors, or editors who push their writing in new directions rather than advising them to produce nothing but safe, “publishable” work. Only rarely, however, do advanced researchers turn to published writing guides as a means of developing and improving their writing. How do I know? Of the hundreds of academics I have talked to about their work as scholarly writers, only a few have mentioned books about writing as a significant source of their learning either during or beyond the PhD.

If academics read and heeded such books, what might the landscape of scholarly writing look like today? Curious to measure the distance between the advice offered in academic style guides and the realities of scholarly publishing, I engaged a research assistant to produce an annotated taxonomy of recently published books aimed at academic writers from across the disciplines. Her initial database search yielded more than five hundred entries; we winnowed this list down to one hundred writing guides, all published or in print in the years 2000—2010 and mostly targeted at advanced academics: that is, at graduate students and faculty. The list also included about a dozen generic style guides that one might expect to find on academics’ bookshelves: acknowledged classics of the genre such as Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, Gowers’s The Complete Plain Words, Lanham’s Editing Prose, and Williams’s Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace.

Of the one hundred books in our filtered sample, only 17 percent exclusively address university faculty, a significant statistic in its own right—apparently most publishers do not regard post-PhD academics as a viable market for writing guides. The vast majority of the guides (69 percent) target graduate students and/or advanced undergraduates, while a few (8 percent) cater to academically trained professionals such as art and music critics, lawyers, and engineers. The books cover topics ranging from the basics of grammar and usage (who vs. whom, effect vs. affect) to the emotional and psychosocial aspects of writing (how to conquer writer’s block, how to get along with one’s dissertation advisor, how to establish a writing group). We focused specifically on what their authors had to say about the stylistic principles and techniques explored elsewhere in this book. Only two of these topics—clarity and structure—proved so universally compelling that they were discussed in more than 80 percent of the books examined. Several other key “elements of stylishness” such as concrete language and opening hooks were mentioned in fewer than half the guides surveyed and therefore are not discussed here.

Figure 3.1. Percentage of advanced academic style guides that allow/encourage or prohibit/discourage twelve specific techniques associated with stylish writing (n = one hundred). For more details, see the appendix.

On six key points of style, the guides were virtually unanimous in their advice to academic authors (see Figure 3.1):

• Clarity, Coherence, Concision: Strive to produce sentences that are clear, coherent, and concise. (The “three Cs” are mentioned in some form in most of the style guides; only two guides out of one hundred explicitly argue against these values.)

• Short or Mixed-Length Sentences: Keep sentences short and simple, or vary your rhythm by alternating longer sentences with shorter ones.

• Plain English: Avoid ornate, pompous, Latinate, or waffly prose.

• Precision: Avoid vagueness and imprecision.

• Active Verbs: Avoid passive verb constructions or use them sparingly; active verbs should predominate.

• Telling a Story: Create a compelling narrative.

On six further questions, however, the guides offer inconsistent or conflicting recommendations:

• Personal Pronouns: Should academic authors use I and we, or not?

• Careful Use of Jargon: Should authors use specialist terminology when appropriate, or avoid disciplinary jargon altogether?

• Personal Voice: Should the writer be present in the writing (for example, via personal anecdotes, emotive responses, self-reflective commentary, and the development of a distinctive voice), or not?

• Creative Expression: Should academic authors use figurative language and other “creative” stylistic techniques, or should creative expression be avoided?

• Nonstandard Structure: Should articles and theses always follow a conventional structure, or are unique and experimental structures permitted?

• Engaging Titles: Should academic titles be playful and engaging, or should they be strictly informative?

From these mixed results, I draw two complementary conclusions. On the one hand, the guides’ near unanimity on the first six items suggests that there are certain nonnegotiable principles that all academic writers would be well advised to follow. (One of the most damning findings of my research is that these principles are so often preached yet so seldom practiced.) On the other hand, the contradictory nature of the guides’ advice on matters such as pronoun usage, structure, and titling reminds us just how complex and fraught the task of academic writing can be, especially for early career researchers who are still struggling to define a coherent academic identity.

Occasionally the writing guides’ advice diverges along predictable disciplinary lines, as when 84 percent of the science guides but only 52 percent of the humanities guides recommend a standard structure for articles and theses. On most stylistic questions, however, the disciplines themselves are divided. For example, a majority of the guides (55 percent) advocate the use of personal pronouns, yet at least a few books in every disciplinary category (sciences, social sciences, humanities, and generic) caution against using I or we. Likewise, 43 percent of the guides commend creative forms of expression such as figurative or nonacademic language, but 9 percent (one or more from each major disciplinary category) warn against creativity in academic writing. How, then, are we to decide whose advice to follow?

To make matters even more confusing, the style guides themselves vary widely in academic register and style. About one-third (38 percent) employ an academic register characterized by complex syntax, sophisticated language, and abstract or theoretical ideas; nearly half (44 percent) maintain a generally formal but “plain English” tone; and the remainder (18 percent) introduce a more creative/colloquial style. Each of these three registers is fairly evenly distributed across the disciplines, suggesting that neither conventionality nor creativity holds a monopoly in any academic field. At the “creative/colloquial” end of the scale, authors use metaphor, wordplay, humor, personal anecdotes, experimental formal structures, and a raft of other stylish techniques to engage and inform their readers:

A good first paragraph is all about striking the right note, or, to switch metaphors, giving your reader a firm handshake.²

If you are more fastidious and you think things like, “I’ll start writing just as soon as I’ve polished the underside of my Venetian blinds, alphabetized my CDs, and organised my rubber bands by size,” steps must be taken.³

Using theory is a tactic to cover the author’s ass.⁴

At the “academic” end of the scale, by contrast, the writing in the style guides tends to sound much more, well, academic:

The reason it is so difficult to make any progress in deciding how much support a premise must offer a conclusion in order for “[premise], therefore [conclusion]” to qualify as an argument is that it does not make a lot of sense to talk about what is a justification for what in the abstract.⁵

Research nearly always requires the participation of many collaborators and an operational support structure, plus the professional institutions that enable individuals to acquire training (at a university for example) and to pursue research in a laboratory or in the field.⁶

Such post hoc or retrospective theorizing reverses the directionality of the theory-research relationship.⁷

About three-quarters of the guides surveyed present their advice through indirect suggestion and examples rather than through direct imperatives such as you must or you should. Only a handful, however, explicitly foreground the principle of choice. Stephen Pyne documents the many stylistic options available to the confident stylist in the humanities, noting, for instance, that “colloquial language will grate against, even mock, a scholarly argument; so will exalted language in the service of the mundane.… Still for everything there is a time and place. A small dose of the vernacular can work like double washers on a machine bolt, allowing the parts to rotate without locking up.”⁸ Pat Francis superimposes art making with writing, incorporating creative materials into her own work—sketches, photos, collages, postcards, unusual uses of white space, diary entries, poetry, wordplay—and suggesting exercises designed to help researchers in arts disciplines flex their creative muscles.⁹ Lynn Nygaard discusses epistemological issues such as objectivity, expressivism, personality, and transparency, bringing together science and humanities perspectives in a way that is rare in books aimed mainly at scientists.¹⁰ Robert Goldbort offers a clear, readable account of science writing, including its history and public attitudes toward science writers; rather than demanding adherence to a rigid set of rules, Goldbort recognizes and encourages variety.¹¹ Angela Thody covers the basics of data collection, publication, and presentation, but also puts in a plug for alternative, even radically experimental, research modes.¹² Howard Becker dissects the writing culture of academia, corrects popular misconceptions about the writing process, catalogs common writing neuroses, and suggests practical strategies for negotiating the perils of publishing.¹³ Finally, Stephen Brown analyzes the work of five leading marketing writers through the critical lenses of reader-response theory, Marxist literary theory, deconstruction, biopoetics, and psychoanalysis, respectively. Through his own novel approach to writing about academic writing, Brown actively resists what he calls the “identikit imperative” of most scholarly discourse.¹⁴

These authors make explicit what all of the writing guides in my sample, taken together, implicitly affirm through their many contradictions: academic writing is a process of making intelligent choices, not of following rigid rules. Yes, scholars in some fields have more freedom than others to make stylistic decisions that go against the disciplinary grain. Yes, convention remains a powerful force. Even in the most seemingly inflexible situations, however—for example, in journals where all research reports must conform to a rigid structural template—authors can still decide whether to write clear, concise, energetic sentences or opaque, complex, passive ones. Scientists can choose to use active verbs. Social scientists can choose to introduce a personal voice. Humanities scholars can choose to eschew disciplinary jargon. Informed choice is the stylish writer’s best weapon against the numbing forces of conformity and inertia.

Cultural evolutionists Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd have observed that human beings tend to “imitate the common type” of any given cultural "../../../../Светик/Documents/handbookАнгДийский/2012/index.html#calibre_link-277">¹⁵ For academic writers, the implications of this argument are clear: We can continue to “imitate the common type” of academic writing, endlessly replicating the status quo. We can “imitate the successful,” adopting the stylistic strategies of eminent colleagues. Or we can undertake “forms of learning”—reading, reflection, experimentation—that will take our own work in new directions, so that we, in turn, can become the pathbreakers whose writing others will emulate.

In the chapters that follow, I discuss an array of techniques employed by scholars from across the disciplines to engage and inform their readers. Scattered throughout are callouts titled “Spotlight on Style,” which gloss passages by exemplary writers whose work has been recommended to me by their discipline-based peers. In selecting from an initial list of more than one hundred suggested authors, I have sought to include examples from a wide range of academic fields and genres: from journal articles as well as from books, from highly specialized publications as well as from those aimed at a broader readership, and from conventional as well as deliberately creative academic prose. Readers will inevitably be able to name many other authors equally deserving of attention and emulation: colleagues whose writing they particularly admire, whether for its clarity or for its daring. I urge you to look to your own personal favorites for ideas and inspiration, as well as to the stylish authors profiled here. By “imitating the successful” and making their skills our own, we can collectively evolve the common type of academic writing into something truly worth reading.