Victoria Clayton's Article: The Needless Complexity Of Academic Writing

What do you think of when you think of complex writing? Many people would think of something that they couldn’t read because it was to hard to read. That issue is exactly what is being addressed in the world of academics today. Academics today are writing to a level that is very hard to understand, sometimes even to fellow academics. To the advantage of those who hate reading complex writing, other writers and researchers are starting to speak out on the topic. A newer style of writing is becoming more popular through the controversy. That style of writing is clear and concise writing. It is still controversial as to what is the “best” or what should be used as the common writing style, but there could be a time in the near future that writing by academics and less scholarly people, alike, are writing in the same way. In her article “The Needless Complexity of Academic Writing” published on October 26, 2015, Victoria Clayton argues that academics should not write to such a high level that they are not able to be understood by those who are not

Pinker says that the debate on academic writing comes down to brain training. He says that it is very hard for academics, who have spent years learning all they can about their chosen subjects, to write to a level lower than they have learned. He calls it, “the curse of knowledge” (Pinker 5). Pinker is saying the academics, such as those in the medical field, find it hard to write to a lower level than they have been taught to write like that for so long. I think that in a situation like this, with medical writing, it is important for writing to be at a higher level for that reason, so that the people who need to know medical procedures and information, can read it because that is how they were taught. If there are people that are writing at a higher level, then shouldn’t there be people that should be reading at a higher level