Lately, I’ve had to consider the intricacies of academic writing. Going through piles of dissertations, I repeatedly turn indignant because of unnecessarily difficult and verbose expression. In one place, authors put battalions of complicated concepts on parade without adding anything useful to the study; in another, you find multiple international citations deployed to illustrate the most obvious point. In my real job, I often wrestle officialese into understandable, everyday language, so it’s a real strain trying to adapt to the jargon of the academic world. My research advisors have asked me to write “more scientifically,” which means with detailed documentation of each phase of the study, a rationale for each argument, and the linking of each concept to prior research through references. Moreover, the tedious dissertation format demands that you first describe what you are going to discuss, then you discuss it, and finally you describe what you have just discussed. If a study has value for people outside the world of academia, it won’t appear in print without being completely rewritten. But even with moderate changes to format and style, academic studies could have far more impact on society.