The Rules of Good Academic Writing, Part I

~ Clarissa

Please consider the following paragraph:

I am going to proceed based on the assumption that although the different identity groups that I analyze in my research, as well as many others, undoubtedly exist in the objective reality, any attempt to define them in terms of a shared characteristics that are assumed to be applicable to any member of the group allows to speak of these groups as ‘imagined communities.’ Now, the question arises regarding the reasons of why I consider that literary texts, and specifically novels of the above-mentioned period, will be particularly helpful in working out a definition of a term that seems to belong more to social sciences, especially given the fact that sociologists do not seem to be able to provide a clearer definition of this concept.

How do you feel about it? Now imagine reading an entire article or a book written this way. Scary, huh?

I’m almost too ashamed to confess that this is my writing. I wrote this eight years ago and felt uncommonly proud of my writing style. If you know anything about my personality, you probably realize why people were terrified of telling me how much my writing sucked. Finally, a brave friend downed a few drinks and found the courage to tell me that my writing was bad. The poor guy’s hands were literally shaking and he was speaking in a small, terrified voice.

At first, I thought he was simply being mean. Then, however, I stopped to think about it. Was it possible that my writing wasn’t as amazing as I believed it to be? In order to lay these doubts to rest, I asked another friend whose writing style everybody praised for its elegance to show me her work. She refused for a while because, as I now understand, she didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Finally, she gave in, and I got a chance to read her work.

I might have been a sucky writer but I was a good reader. This is why I immediately realized that my friend’s writing was vastly superior to mine. As a result, I embarked on a journey to find out what it meant to write well in English and develop my own writing style.

In the second installment of this post I will share the principles of good writing that I have established for myself. Please understand that it is normal for people to have different approaches to good writing, so none of these rules need to be set in stone. As long as people love reading your stuff, you are fine. My problem was that nobody wanted to read the crap I wrote precisely because it was crap.

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Published by Clarissa

17 thoughts on “The Rules of Good Academic Writing, Part I”

  1. Seems like a thesis proposal for sure. I don’t really have an academic style right now. I’m “between styles”. I’m sure I will get one when I have finally removed the last vestiges of Western moralistic consciousness from my thought-stream. Then, everything I write will be much clearer and self-consistent.

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  2. But now you still use “I” in your writing, right?

    Could you rewrite the 1st sentence the way you would write it now, please? For practical demonstration and comparison.

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  5. I’ll set aside for now the fact that the entire paragraph consists of only two sentences.

    The first sentence is grammatically incorrect. “…allows to speak…” should have some noun or pronoun, “…allows one to speak…” for example. “X allows to speak of Y” sounds like the type of broken English found in spam. It’s unfortunate, but broken English has come to be associated with con artistry… In this case, I’m guessing your knowledge of English was sufficient. Most likely you were tweaking a long sentence in the word processor for maximum effect, or maybe elegance, and zapped a pronoun without proofreading afterward. That sort of thing has happened to me a lot, but I’m trying to be less lackadaisical about proofreading what I write. It’s also an argument against long sentences.

    The second sentence doesn’t make logical sense. “…a term that seems to belong more to social sciences, especially given the fact that sociologists do not seem to be able to provide a clearer definition…” How about “…in spite of the fact that…”? I know “the fact that” is one of your bugaboos. I don’t have any particular problem with such constructions. I don’t place many arbitrary constraints on myself, but I do try to do without illogic.

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  6. This whole thing, starting with the last line which had me laughing so much I had to revisit the whole thing was DELIGHTFUL. 🙂 (I still haven’t read all the words in your (!!!) writing sample because I didn’t want to try to understand what it was saying.)

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      2. I think it’s perfectly fine to say that something you are doing or have done is crap. It’s better than the sadomasochistic surprise when suddenly people alight upon you and proclaim that you might have thought you were great, but really you are crap. Communication shouldn’t go wasted. There are a lot of opportunities for it. I think one of the main problems with contemporary, Western society is too much of our involvement being ego-based, rather than skill-based or knowledge-based at their core. I always want to be told how to do something, but in contemporary culture it’s always too little and then too much. There are only two roles available for anyone. You are either “the consumer” who must not be criticized, or you are the provider of a service, who can be criticized to death. There are no gradations and no other optional roles. This means if you are providing a service, say some sort of education, you don’t get to criticize those receiving the service, even if it is constructive criticism. You will lose business if you slightly overstep the lines. Service providers are afraid of taking initiatives, because they know they are being policed by the consumers. Consumers don’t really get what they are paying for, in turn, but at least they keep their egos intact.

        But what are egos? An ego can be kept intact even undergoing harsh criticism, if the criticism is delivered in a measured fashion and with good intent.

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        1. I agree! It’s a rare student who can accept my criticism of their writing. I provide very detailed explanations of what’s wrong and how it can be improved. Still, they get upset. I sometimes wonder what it is they are paying me to do, to help them learn or to tell them how fantastic they already are? If everything they do is perfect already, doesn’t that mean they are wasting money and time getting this education??

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          1. I think it’s difficult to receive criticism for cultural reasons, because in individualistic cultures, you are taught to believe that you have a certain amount of inherent genius, AKA “potential” that has to be liberated. Instructors thus become the means to liberate that mysterious, precious, hidden capacity.

            A different way of looking at it is that each person has an inherent value, but this is not in what they can do, but in what they already are. Their ability to walk on the face of the Earth is the fundamental miracle, irrevocable and perfect in itself. Beyond this, what a person has to do is develop a skill, a field of knowledge, some capability. An instructor helps you to do that. Understanding it in this way, no matter how harsh the criticism, it ought not to impact on the ego.

            This is the state of mind that I am returning to, having been brought up with it. You do need to accept your inherent value as a given, and then work on improving what is wrong. The alternative idea, of working to gratify or establish your ego, puts too much at stake and makes improvement psychologically fraught.

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