Reports and Other Long Documents - Part 2

In his article, Richard Johnson-Sheehan talks about writing style, specifically how plain writing is persuasive. This idea almost seems like a contradiction in itself. Yet, in comparison to reading goobledygook, the connection is crystal clear.

Johnson-Sheehan offers eight guidelines for structuring sentences. In summation, the guidelines stress sentence clarity by focusing on the "doer" (active subject), avoiding redundancy, and eliminating wordiness. Generally speaking, academic writing seems to ignore these two suggestions completely. Using Johnson-Sheehan's words, considering the "breathing length" appears to be a non-issue to many writers.

The arrogance of academia suggests that because the writers already understand the information, they should flaunt their knowledge and penalize students for not being experts. As a matter of fact, several texts I have read while in the program have left me feeling out of breath and exhausted. Of course I am a biased student, but I never pass the opportunity to shun academic authors and their writer-based prose.

I do understand that some people do not intend to write in convoluted ways, but simply have a different style. It is also apparent that the topic of the text will usually determine how the text is written (e.g. Foucault). However, it just seems that any writing other than poetry or self-reflection essays are meant to be interpreted by an audience. Hence, I do not understand why arrogant complicated writing is necessary. As an audience member of such material, I would suggest the K.I.S.S. concept to many authors: Keep It Simple Stupid/Silly.