At the risk of starting a firestorm . . .

Doug, an academic himself, sent me this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, which takes academic writers to task for obscure, jargonistic writing at the expense of comprehension. I agree with most of what she says, having dealt with academic writing of that sort as a student and as an editor. One of the most salient points is that it makes a lot of informative thinking inaccessible to a wider readership, which some academic writers appear to disdain. Much of it applies to fiction...