Some very smart people write very poorly. Sometimes the problem involves not having learned the mechanics of good writing. Sometimes the problem is "overwriting," a style that is too complex and that calls attention to itself rather than what is being written about. I am writing this essay so that I have something to hand students who need a bit of coaching on this subject. I'm posting it online because I think it might be useful to others as well.
An author is like a host. Consider what being a good
host requires. You must be gracious and welcoming. If the guests
show up in jeans when you had planned black tie, you must still be gracious and
welcoming -- and perhaps take off your coat and tie to make your guest feel
like they fit in better. You don't make your guests do a lot of work, but
if there is something the guests can do that will be engaging, you give a task
or two, and perhaps you increase the level of effort required by your guests as
the evening progresses (first they pass a tray of hors d'oeuvres, later they
might like serving the cake), but you never get to the point of making it
unpleasant for them. And the food: A
gracious host is careful to season it moderately, not to the point at which the
spices are overpowering.
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| Picture of the most gracious hostess I ever knew. |
What does gracious and welcoming writing look like? While it might be tempting to exclaim, “Complex
ideas require complex forms of expression!” we know that is not true. Some of the most eloquent, complex ideas have
been expressed in clear prose. Yes, the
work of some writers (Levinas comes to my mind) are notable for being difficult
to read, a PhD student is not yet famous enough for people to read his or her
work despite the obtuseness of the prose.
Furthermore, even if (when) the student does become a famous scholar, a
crowning achievement is to be known for the grace and clarity of one’s prose. I, for one, would be much happier to be
compared to Dewey than to Peirce.
The author should be working harder than the reader. Here I am assuming that your reader has an
appropriate level of background knowledge and a willingness to pay an
appropriate amount of attention to the author’s words. That’s it.
I’m not saying that the author must write down to the reader. Rather, I suggest that complex, obtuse prose
is that way either because the author has not yet figured out the problem
clearly enough to explain it well, or because the author thinks (perhaps
subconsciously) that complex sentences and big words make him or her seem smart
– or smarter -- or both.
Sentences that have lots of subordinate phrases and clauses
and are full of infrequently used, multisyllabic words require the reader to
read and reread, to parse carefully, to figure out what that “not” is negating,
and so forth. Authors should vary
sentence length to increase the liveliness of the prose, but break up all
sentences that are too long and have too many phrases and clauses. Before dumping the author’s extended vocabulary
into the text, the author consider which words are actually needed. (Here the analogy to seasoning moderately and
not overwhelming what ought to be the main flavors of the dish is particularly
apt.)
As for the complexity of the concepts, my view is that it is best to start by working through the less complex and work up to the more complex. Just like the host first invites the guest to pass the hors d'oeuvres and then may later provide a slightly more challenging task, the author should offer the reader simple ideas before moving to more difficult, more nuanced ones. The author is, to use yet another analogy, teaching, and a good teacher asks the student to start by learning to do the easier or more basic things and then more to progressively more difficult ones. An author should work the same way.
This is not about dumbing down the research or writing simplistically. This is about, first of all, clarifying your
concepts and explaining them well and, secondly, about respecting your reader
who, frankly, has better things to do than read self-indulgent, overly
complicated prose.
The degree of prior knowledge a written work will require of the reader will, of course, depend on the intended audience and purpose of the work. The reader of a scholarly journal article will be expected to have more prior knowledge; to be more willing to accept the specificity of a sophisticated, technical vocabulary; and to comprehend more complex sentence structure than a freshman reading an introductory textbook. Nevertheless, it is the author's job to match the difficulty of the prose to the intended reader and to avoid making the writing any harder to read than absolutely necessary. In short, a good author writes with a generous spirit, welcoming the reader to think about the author's thoughts, inviting the reader to join the author on an intellectual journey.
