An academic’s guide to writing well | Features - Times Higher Education

Scholarly prose can be verbose and unclear, and can obscure the point you are trying to make. Joe Moran, professor of English at Liverpool John Moores University and the author of First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing…and Life (Viking) offers his top 10 tips for writing well offers his top 10 tips for writing well

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Academics are often accused of writing unreadable, jargon-laden prose. This is unfair. In my experience, academic writers are almost never wilfully obscure, and write perfectly well. But it is true that academic writing can feel uncongenial and effortful to read. We don’t do it on purpose. Most of us would love to write in a more inviting way. But how to do this?

Here are some tips I have picked up, through trial and error, over the years. I hope they will not sound too preachy. I start from the premise that we are all guilty: I have committed all the “sins” listed below, and no doubt will continue to do so.
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Source: Times Higher Education