Stylish Academic Writing, by Helen Sword

Helen Sword. Stylish Academic Writing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. 220 pages. ISBN 9780674064485.

Author Helen Sword read and analyzed 1,000 articles published in academic journals in 10 disciplines to determine what constitutes stylish academic writing. She also studied 100 recently-published style guides to see where they agreed and differed on points of academic writing style. In Stylish Academic Writing she shares what she's learned about what makes a good article. In fourteen chapters she discusses voice, sentence construction, titles, hooks, jargon, article structure, citation style, creative academic writing, and more.

Two of the chapters speak most to me: the one on voice, and the other on citation style. They both speak to pet peeves of mine. The first is when an author has to mangle their writing to avoid using the first person. Much of the writing in library science is reporting on a project or case study, in which the author is simply telling a story about how a project was launched, carried out or successfully completed. It makes no sense to not be able to use the first person when telling this story. But if you look at much of the library science literature, you'll see many of these stories told in a way that puts a distance between the reader and what's being shared. This makes the article harder to read, and less interesting. Articles should be written in a way that conveys all of the important information that the author is trying to share, but in a way that will increase readership. Writing in the first person can help with that goal. Sword advocates for the use of the first person when possible.

My second pet peeve has to do with citation styles that require the author to put names, dates, and sometimes page numbers in parentheses right in the text. When I read an article that has a lot of citations, I sometimes find it difficult to follow the threads of a sentence or paragraph through all of these parenthetical citations. The simple use of endnotes, identified with a superscripted number, avoids this problem. Sentences and paragraphs with the simple numbered indication of an endnote are much easier to read and comprehend than one with the citations in parentheses interrupting the flow. Again, the goal is to share information and increase the readership of each article, and a simpler citation style does that. Sword supports the use of simpler citation styles that don't interrupt the flow of the article.

While I'm only highlighting two issues in this review, Sword's book is full of good advice. She illustrates all of her chapters with both good and bad examples so readers can understand what makes good writing, and what hinders comprehension. I believe this book would be useful to all academics who want to improve their writing.