Archive: Arts & Entertainment

SMART TALK

by Dr. Will S. Sert


ACADEMESE: Now that another academic year is well under way, we at the Center for English as a First Language need to highlight the worst writing published in this language. The dishonor falls to the scholarly papers in academic quarterlies.

The business of the arts and sciences is to expand our knowledge and inspire us to even better ideas. Science and art are useless unless shared.

But sometimes - often in some journals - the author's priority is to obfuscate as much as possible to confuse his readers, and to use as many redundancies as possible. This way, his peers may be impressed because they can't understand what they're reading, and the redundancies, to say nothing of all the passive verbs, raise the word count and fill more pages.

Here's a sample from a paper published by Dr. Lawrence Blithermore, a professor at Bedspring Tech, down the road in Los Libidos, Texas:

"The author and his fellow colleagues have discovered for the first time a new genetic mutation in our experimental laboratory. Although surrounded on all sides by the central core of the organism in question, the genetically mutated cells completely kill all epidermal bacteria with 100% morbidity."

That's actually a simple idea when stated intelligently: "We have discovered a mutation. Although surrounded by the core of the organism, the mutated cells kill all epidermal bacteria."

There. Doesn't that sound like knowledge meant to be shared? Maybe even a bit weird and fascinating?

Einstein said that you don't know your subject until you can explain it to a six-year-old. By that standard, academic English is the language of profound ignorance.

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