Yikes: It turns out professors suck at writing

Jeff Camhi for the Chronicle of Higher Education describes his findings from writing experts when it comes to how well college professors write. As some opinions mention:

• “The authors we typically work with — academics — have difficulty writing for a trade [i.e., public] audience. To retrain them to write for a wider audience can be quite excruciating.” (editor at a major American university press)
• “Academic writers often struggle to find the ‘trade voice.’ Though it may sound perverse to say so, most scholars know too much to write well for a trade readership.” (former editor in chief of a major American university press)
• “The writing of most professors is just so boring.” (former editor in chief of a prominent division of Random House)

Camhi explains how he’s heard similar remarks from expert publishers as well. One way to explain it is that once you learn to write well for the public, which itself is an art, you need to keep practicing it, or you lose it.

Also mentioned is an argument–a rather silly one–and an obvious rebuttal:

Indeed. Just because a professor is such an expert about a certain topic doesn’t mean that his gift needs to stop there. In such a case, the level of arrogance some academics have then is made all the worse. Professors shouldn’t merely be told ‘congratulations’ for doing what they’re paid to do. There’s always room for improvement.

And Camhi may have the answer for how to improve. He suggests a two year night course program for professors in non-fiction creative writing. If such a program were to come about, it would likely be the first. Of the 53 respondents from various universities Camhi talked to, none of them had heard of such a program.

Another suggestion may be to allow professors to seek advice from the writing center as well. The University of Melbourne, in Australia, does just that.

The next time that your professor criticizes your writing, think about how he or she could likely use some improvement too.