{"id":1010,"date":"2014-10-16T17:18:19","date_gmt":"2014-10-16T04:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=1010"},"modified":"2014-10-16T17:20:55","modified_gmt":"2014-10-16T04:20:55","slug":"polished-wibble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=1010","title":{"rendered":"Polished wibble"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Academia\"<\/a>I have spent my working life in the communication business.<\/p>\n

I have written for print media.\u00a0 I have written for radio. \u00a0I have written for film and TV.\u00a0 And, for a good part of the past 20 years, I have written (or edited) reports designed to inform or influence decision-makers.<\/p>\n

In the early days, the people with whom I worked were often marketers or market researchers.\u00a0 Latterly, I seem to have worked with more and more academics.<\/p>\n

The marketers were often one step away from being snake oil salesmen.\u00a0 As one of my former clients was wont to say: \u2018It\u2019s all about promise writ large.\u00a0 Forget the sausage.\u00a0 A sausage is just a sausage.\u00a0 Sell the sizzle.\u2019<\/p>\n

And the market researchers were often unhelpfully cautious.\u00a0 On the one hand this; on the other hand that.\u00a0 \u2018Oh, I would so like to meet a one-handed market researcher,\u2019 a client once told me.<\/p>\n

But the shortcomings of both the marketers and the market researchers pale in comparison with those of many academics.\u00a0 The marketers may often have overstated their case.\u00a0 And the market researchers may sometimes have been reluctant to get off the fence.\u00a0 But at least they generally said what they said reasonably clearly.\u00a0 Too many academics employ several thousand words \u2013 many of them long, esoteric words \u2013 to say, well, who knows what?<\/p>\n

As one of my colleagues observed, the language of academia is often \u2018polished wibble.\u00a0 It looks impressive.\u00a0 But it says very little.\u2019<\/p>\n

He also observed that many general readers think that if they can\u2019t understand what an academic has written it must be because they are not brainy enough.\u00a0 But that\u2019s seldom true.\u00a0 If the general reader can\u2019t understand what the academic has written, it is probably because the academic has not written it very well.<\/p>\n

More than 50 years ago, Rudolf Flesch devised a Reading Ease formula.\u00a0 (You will find it included in many word processing programs.) \u00a0A score of 60 or more suggests writing that most general readers will easily understand.<\/p>\n

But the majority of academic writing that has crossed my desk over the past couple of years has struggled to score 20.\u00a0 One memorable piece scored a miserable 2.3.\u00a0 That\u2019s not effective communication.\u00a0 That\u2019s just wibble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have spent my working life in the communication business. I have written for print media.\u00a0 I have written for radio. \u00a0I have written for film and TV.\u00a0 And, for a good part of the past 20 years, I have … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1010"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1012,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions\/1012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}