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ahuggingsam's review against another edition
3.0
Still had this lying around from when I was a PhD student and decided to finally finish it. It has good advice with a lot of examples, Though I feel like the author doesn't always follow her own adivice (admitedly a hard thing to do). I'd say give it a go if you're a PhD student looking for some guidance, otherwise leave it
kissliag's review against another edition
3.0
3.5- some good examples but a lot about rejecting conventional structure that I didn’t necessarily agree with. However, I really liked her examples of how to explain abstract ideas in more concrete ways.
colin_cox's review against another edition
3.0
A spectre is haunting academia—the spectre of clarity. All the powers of the old Ivory Tower have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Editor and Department Chair, Tenure-Track Professor and Ph.D. Candidate, yadda yadda yadda.
Stylish Academic Writing is a fine book even if far too much of it seems obvious. Funnily enough, the obviousness of Sword's book is precisely her point: academia knows it writes poorly and encourages poor writing, yet it fails to act. Swords offers several explanations for academia's lack of action: stale traditions, stubborn gatekeepers, and myopic individual interests, just to name a few. But as I read it, Sword believes that academia's inability to reflect, self assess, and evolve further exacerbates many of these problems. There are reasons to challenge Sword here. My department, for example, is riddled with self-assessment opportunities. My experience, like anyone's, is limited, but I cannot think of an academic who yearns for more self-assessment opportunities. Plus, disseminating academic writing to large audiences is hard. While sites like Academia.edu allow academics to distribute their work freely, paywalls are a cumbersome obstacle that reinforces certain divisions between scholars and the public, which in turn, might reinforce certain poor-writing practices.
Chapter 8, "The Story Net," is easily my favorite chapter in the book. Here, Sword encourages her reader to think of academic work as "a favorite book or movie" and to "distill its plot into a single sentence, and imagine what would happen if you plotted your research story along the same lines" (97). It's interesting to imagine "two seemingly incompatible theoretical concepts...brought into a single conceptual space" as a research project version of Pride and Prejudice (97-98). There is nothing new about pitting two conflicting ideas against one another, but Sword's framing of this process feels new. Plus, it potentially promotes interdisciplinary relationships. Would an economist or sociologist find clarity in thinking of their work as a non-fiction, researched-based appropriation of Pride and Prejudice? Sword seems to think so, and it undoubtedly cuts the other way.
There are moments to skip and skim in Stylish Academic Writing, but it's short and worth an afternoon of any academic's time.
Stylish Academic Writing is a fine book even if far too much of it seems obvious. Funnily enough, the obviousness of Sword's book is precisely her point: academia knows it writes poorly and encourages poor writing, yet it fails to act. Swords offers several explanations for academia's lack of action: stale traditions, stubborn gatekeepers, and myopic individual interests, just to name a few. But as I read it, Sword believes that academia's inability to reflect, self assess, and evolve further exacerbates many of these problems. There are reasons to challenge Sword here. My department, for example, is riddled with self-assessment opportunities. My experience, like anyone's, is limited, but I cannot think of an academic who yearns for more self-assessment opportunities. Plus, disseminating academic writing to large audiences is hard. While sites like Academia.edu allow academics to distribute their work freely, paywalls are a cumbersome obstacle that reinforces certain divisions between scholars and the public, which in turn, might reinforce certain poor-writing practices.
Chapter 8, "The Story Net," is easily my favorite chapter in the book. Here, Sword encourages her reader to think of academic work as "a favorite book or movie" and to "distill its plot into a single sentence, and imagine what would happen if you plotted your research story along the same lines" (97). It's interesting to imagine "two seemingly incompatible theoretical concepts...brought into a single conceptual space" as a research project version of Pride and Prejudice (97-98). There is nothing new about pitting two conflicting ideas against one another, but Sword's framing of this process feels new. Plus, it potentially promotes interdisciplinary relationships. Would an economist or sociologist find clarity in thinking of their work as a non-fiction, researched-based appropriation of Pride and Prejudice? Sword seems to think so, and it undoubtedly cuts the other way.
There are moments to skip and skim in Stylish Academic Writing, but it's short and worth an afternoon of any academic's time.
uderecife's review against another edition
3.0
The title gives you little doubt on what this book is about. If you picked it up, you already know what you are looking for and what you might expect from reading it. However, this is not exactly a manual on how to do it. It’s more of a survey of what others have done (or are doing) as a way to entice you to break from the oftentimes dogmatic pressure to keep in line with the untold stylistic rules of academic production that seem to govern your discipline.
Helen Sword does a great job in covering the many aspects of academic text production with insightful comments and very enlightening examples. Every bit of text quoted here serves exactly the function it purports to do, i.e., to back up what is being proposed, or criticized, with what is being practiced by the many academic authors in the different fields surveyed in this study of hers.
It’s also important to point out that Helen Sword doesn’t just limit this work to a theoretical critique of the many academic stylistic writing practices, good or bad, but also offers good advice on how to achieve better results with one’s own academic written production. On the second part of this book, aptly titled The Elements of Stylishness, Sword finishes all the chapters with an interesting practical section of Things to Try. Here you’ll find all sorts of good ideas on what you can do try out and achieve the same good stylistic results analyzed on the chapter that you have just read. This is immensely useful if you really need to break from all the old habits that prevent you to get the best results with your academic writing.
From all that has been said above, and given that this is a very targeted book (its readers have a clear idea of what to expect), to recommend it is a futile exercise: If you need it, you know you should read it. Your skills as a more versatile, enticing, and clear academic writer will definitely improve.
Helen Sword does a great job in covering the many aspects of academic text production with insightful comments and very enlightening examples. Every bit of text quoted here serves exactly the function it purports to do, i.e., to back up what is being proposed, or criticized, with what is being practiced by the many academic authors in the different fields surveyed in this study of hers.
It’s also important to point out that Helen Sword doesn’t just limit this work to a theoretical critique of the many academic stylistic writing practices, good or bad, but also offers good advice on how to achieve better results with one’s own academic written production. On the second part of this book, aptly titled The Elements of Stylishness, Sword finishes all the chapters with an interesting practical section of Things to Try. Here you’ll find all sorts of good ideas on what you can do try out and achieve the same good stylistic results analyzed on the chapter that you have just read. This is immensely useful if you really need to break from all the old habits that prevent you to get the best results with your academic writing.
From all that has been said above, and given that this is a very targeted book (its readers have a clear idea of what to expect), to recommend it is a futile exercise: If you need it, you know you should read it. Your skills as a more versatile, enticing, and clear academic writer will definitely improve.