7 Comments
User's avatar
Lura Forcum's avatar

Here for the manifestas, tiny or otherwise!

Chris's avatar

“Look up unfamiliar jargon.”

One problem with the humanities, however, is how academics like coming up with jargon just to have jargon.

Virginia Karnstein's avatar

But you still have to understand it to get through these short books, so get the dictionary!

Chris's avatar

It’s one thing for a writer to use complex words. I enjoy well-written prose myself. It’s another when they pretentiously devise long, academic-sounding words to cover up their paucity of ideas.

Virginia Karnstein's avatar

And being annoyingly written doesn’t change how important these books are, is the issue

Chris's avatar

Yeah that’s fair.

Chris's avatar

One acquaintance of mine was completing her masters degree in music, and she said the academic writing she had to engage with was the most pretentious she’d ever come across. She’d spend half her time looking up what the authors were saying, only to see that the authors were using/inventing complex words to describe things they could’ve explained quite simply.