Lieberman on Bad Writing
Jethro Lieberman (New York Law School – Law) has posted Bad Writing: Some Thoughts on the Abuse of Scholarly Rhetroic (New York Law School Law Review, Vol. 49, pp. 649-664, 2004-2005) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
- Like most kinds of writing, academic writing rarely shines, but far more often than ordinary writing scholarly prose is murky and impenetrable. This brief jeu d’esprit considers several forms of bad writing, rejecting the claim, increasingly made in academic quarters, that “difficult writing” is necessary to the scholarly enterprise. Bloated, foggy, and enigmatic prose masquerades as profundity that escapes conventional mental grooves. In fact it is useless, unethical, and taken far enough, evil.