Solutions to Avoiding Bad Academic Writing By Jason Beneby Northcentral University Abstract
This paper will assess the writing process and offer an explanation of how academic professionals process what is good academic writing, what are common mistakes made by academic writers, common criticisms against poor academic writing, and solutions how to avoid poor academic writing. The paper will discuss how academic professionals develop ideas, and go about expressing those ideas to their peers. The paper will also explain how academic professionals use complex information to explain simple ideas and phenomena, and how the use of such complex words, is often perceived as unnecessary jargon and nonsensical to those outside the scientific community. The paper will also provide an example of how writing has become so predictable, that one author purposely submitted a flawed paper, just to have the published as proof that academic writing had fallen to new lows. Finally the paper will offer possible solutions that would help writers avoid the pitfalls that lead to poor academic writing. Keywords: jargon, academic, incomprehensible, phenomena Solutions to Avoiding Bad Academic Writing The practice of academic professional writing revolves around the principle of presenting researched studied information to peers for review in the academic community. It is this mindset that allows researched or theoretical information, to be presented in a context that is relevant to the target reader, by confuse to those outside the scientific community. The issue with this approach is that non academics who attempt to read the information, feel like they are reading nothing more than scientific mumbo jumbo, gibberish purposely written to exclude those outside the scientific community.

Common Writing Mistakes of Academic Writers

Professional academic writers often find themselves presenting research writing that is overly complex and confusing to non-traditional readers. Their writing has been referred to as incomprehensible (Kelly, 1999), and filled with jargon used to explain simple concepts. This type of writing leads to poor academic style, where writhers are focused on the content style established by the medium of the publisher. Larry Grossburg offer defense of this academic style by saying “It's interesting that we expect scientists to have a technical vocabulary, but when it comes to the most complex system we know of - namely, human social existence - we somehow think we don't need a technical vocabulary to describe it.” (Kelly, 1999) It is with this logical thinking progress, that writers believe that there jargon serves a real purpose in the work; because it allows academics to use simple terms to stand for complicated ones.

Common Criticism of Poor Academic Writing

Academic writers are often criticized for presenting information that is dense and difficult to understand (Kelly, 1999), which is a popular writing style for higher learning. This writing style combined with a perceived absence of scrutinized editing in academic journals (Berube). Lead some in the scientific community to wonder about the credibility of those editing the articles and journals. An example of one such writer was Alan Sokal who in the spring of 1996 submitted “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermentics of Quantum Gravity” a paper purposely filled with nonsensical jargon, but was examined and published in Social Text a respected journal. It was only discovered later when Sokal later wrote in the journal Lingua Franca: "Fair enough: anyone who believes the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment (I live on the 21st floor)" (Kelly, 1999, para 4). This instance is what gave some credence to the criticism that academic writing had become poor and lacked editing with academic rigor.

How to Avoid Poor Academic Writing

Professionals can avoid poor academic writing by presenting journals, papers, books etc, that even when containing higher learning ideas and complex thinking, it is written in a context that is not confusing. By adopting this style academics can avoid long complex sentence structure and complicated technical vocabulary that only confuse the general audience, while appeasing the target audience. This will allow for writers to focus on the broad base of readers, while presenting the information in a clear concise manner that is correct for punctuation, spelling, and grammar. This process must be facilitated by sound planning, understanding and utilization writing principles, and product subjected to proper editing and editorial scrutiny.

Conclusion

The writing process requires discipline from the writer, to remain focused on the core principles of sound academic writing. These principles will allow the writer to present there findings in a broader sense that is understood by the community as a whole rather than just other academic writers. For writers to honor these principles and avoid the common mistakes, and criticism that currently follow higher learning enthusiast. It would be wise to adhere to the sound principles of the American Psychological Association, where it is clearly explained how to present there scholarly works in a clear and concise manner. References Anonymous (2010, April 3). Robert Rector: Bad writing gets its just reward. San Gabriel Valley Tribune. Retrieved June 26, 2013 , from http://search.proquest.com.proxy1.ncu.edu/docview/379815984?accountid=28180.

American Psychological Association (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th Ed. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Kelly, R. (1999, April 8). Bad blood over bad writing: Critics say US academic language has become so convoluted that it is largely incomprehensible to the point where argumentis becoming impossible. The Irish Times, p. 15. Retrieved June 26, 2013, from http://search.proquest.com.proxy1.ncu.edu/docview/310535955?accountid=28180

Smith, D. (1999, March 7). Academic: When the writing is bad, ideas get lost. Winston - Salem Journal, p. 17. Retrieved June 26, 2013, from http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/badwriting.htm