Academic writing is getting harder to read—the humanities most of all
A cademics have long been accused of jargon-filled writing that is impossible to understand. A recent cautionary tale was that of Ally Louks, a researcher who set off a social media storm with an innocuous post on X celebrating the completion of her PhD. If it was Ms Louks’s research topic (“olfactory ethics”—the politics of smell) that caught the attention of online critics, it was her verbose thesis abstract that further provoked their ire. In two weeks, the post received more than 21,000 retweets and 100m views.
Survival is a case of child’s play
Paradoxically, cleaner emissions from ships and power plants are playing a role
The mystery of exactly how people left Africa deepens
But interpreting meanings, rather than just words and sentences, will be a daunting task
And it can generate sentences trained on their own writing
The industry is failing to make itself greener
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/12/18/academic-writing-is-getting-harder-to-read-the-humanities-most-of-all