Bret Devereaux

So there's that tweet floating around about bad academic writing in literature. I have thoughts. First: the text in question, I can almost guarantee, has never been assigned to an undergraduate. No one gets to lit-101 and opens up their book to that. 1/8

This https://twitter.com/KBAndersen/status/1373277502735585284 … is very clearly field-to-field communication. It's the literature equivalent of an experimental white paper in physics. (Also, pulling jargon-heavy passages like this out of context always renders them difficult to read) 3/8

Now I will say that I cordially dislike that style of academic writing. I very much prefer arguments that can be put in plain language (but then again, that's part of why I don't do a ton of narratology). 4/8

I tell my students never to use a long word when a short one will do and never to use a rare word when a common one will do (though that advice sits in uneasy tension with the advice to 'always pick the word that says exactly what you mean, no more and no less.') 5/8