Keeping Scholarly Papers Simple

Abstract

Many published papers are difficult to read because their authors overuse words that are not widely understood or use new ‘invented’ terms that we could manage without. The first category includes many words that, although they have been used for centuries, are now uncommon and cause readers to pause and search dictionaries to continue. The second contains words that were invented to elevate the significance of claimed new approaches: they commonly exaggerate importance with prefixes like ‘hyper-‘ and ‘meta-‘ or adding suffixes like ‘-ize’ or ‘-logy’. Whilst many of them were designed to simplify writing, a simple experiment – counting the syllables in the new vs an original simpler form using existing vocabulary – showed that most of them did not achieve any benefit and should not be used -- if you want your paper to be widely read. The use of old, but now uncommon, words is more problematical, but writers should be guided by a desire to have their papers read quickly and easily to completion – by both native and non-native speakers; they should proof-read papers with this criterion uppermost. We added a particular caution about the over-use of acronyms, which may add more confusion than the space saved. Overall, the “Keep It Simple” principle is important in academic writing: it keeps the content accessible to both native and non-native speakers.