Exorcising the curse of knowledge
On a snowy, windy evening the day after the election, author Steven Pinker told a packed audience at Sever Hall exactly what’s wrong with so much academic writing: It’s filled with abstract language, clunky transitions, clichés, “zombie nouns,” and “compulsive hedging,” signified by words like “somewhat, comparatively, and to a certain degree.” In Wednesday’s hourlong talk, “The Sense of Style: Writing Instruction for the 21st Century,” part of the “Harvard Writers at Work Lecture Series,” Pinker also bemoaned the tendency of academics to “write down” to their readers, using what he called “motherese,” the grating, I-know-best tone that a mother might use to explain something to a 6-year-old. “You don’t need abstract language simply because the concept is difficult,” Pinker said, citing best-selling science writers like Richard Dawkins, who’ve succeeded in making complex ideas such as evolution accessible to lay readers. (The modest Pinker, author of “The Better Angels of Our Nature”...