a philosopher may end up imitating the sage’s portentous
style. Or a commentator on a literary text may come to mimic
its mannerisms in her own approach, perhaps unconsciously.
Similarly a researcher analysing a particular bureaucracy or
organization can often unconsciously copy officials in
overusing organizational acronyms and employing the
bureaucracy’s ponderous and passive phrasings as her own.
◆ An effort to cram in substantive contentis the last of this set of
influences. Academic authors often try to convey a great
deal of detail about their argument methods and research
techniques, resulting in a text which looks close-packed
with material and dense to read. All these imitative
influences tend to make your text more esoteric, more
polysyllabic, more specialized. There are some widely used
measures of readability, like the ‘fog index’ which increases
with average sentence lengths and the number of multi-
syllable words per sentence. Many theses will top the outer
limit at the top of the fog index scores.
A third set of style pressures has a different type of impact.
As the centre column of Figure 5.2 shows, emphasizing these fac-
tors will make for better style and a more readable and accessible
text up to a certain point. But carrying on beyond this point,
overemphasizing these factors beyond an optimum level, will
thereafter begin to make your text more and more difficult
to read.
◆ A push for parsimonious phrasing, a style eliminating all
redundant text, follows through on a ‘less is more’ policy.
This stance can be a force for good or ill depending on
circumstances. In a loosely knit text, full of ‘waffle’, making
cuts down to the bare bones of the argument will generate
important improvements in style and readability. It will
often cut out pointless, minimally reshaded extensions of a
core argument, and help sharpen up the profile of the
author’s thought for readers.
An unnecessary word does no work. It doesn’t
further an argument, state an important
qualification, or add a compelling detail. (See?)
Howard Becker^3108 ◆AUTHORING A PHD