why smart people write bad

why is academia full of bad writers? did school teach us to write badly? how do we get better at writing? In this video, Taha explores how school makes us bad writers, why academics write so weirdly and how we can (potentially) write better!

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SOCIAL MEDIA
Sabrina
Melissa
Taha

CREDITS
Produced by Taha Khan
Video Editing by Joe Trickey
Motion Design by Joe Trickey
Special Thanks to Rachel Jepsen & Marco Lau

MUSIC

RECOMMENDED READING / SOURCES

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - uh oh did school fail us
00:10 - for if u wanna read more books
01:03 - why is academia written badly?
01:39 - small word do trick
02:15 - taha does an academia cosplay
03:16 - tfw u use the thesaurus too much
03:46 - why nobody can explain bereal to me
04:36 - maybe WE'RE the bad guys
04:58 - what time is it? powerpoint time
07:00 - nerds beefing each other
07:53 - in defence of academia
09:00 - writing by telling stories
09:41 - the best writing advice ever
10:18 - more things to watch!

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Welcome to the joke under the fold!

I bought a pen that can write underwater, it can write other words as well.

Leave a comment with the word "PEN" to let me know you were here ;-)

[martinmc]

Every single year of school I’ve been through I remember being taught how to write a specific way, writing that way, and then being told that way is completely wrong the next year.

Edit: Congrats on 1 million subs!

[seneca]

I’m a PhD student, so I have to read and write a lot of academic papers. I wouldn’t say that academics write complex text because they’re trying to impress their peers. Rather, it’s the standard in the academic community, and you get corrected if you don’t write that way. One of the comments I got on my master’s thesis was that it wasn’t “formal” enough. i.e. It wasn’t complex enough, so I had to go back and make the writing more complicated.

There are also some good reasons for the complexity. Jargon can be useful for communicating efficiently with other people in the field. You also want to be very precise and not leave anything open to misinterpretation. That said, it often goes too far.

[RedNinjaRacer_]

It's funny how school is one of the most counterintuitive parts of society yet also one of the most important ones.

[dotpip]

I've always noticed how the way we're taught to write in school is completely different from the writing in the texts we're supposed to base our essays on. Just goes to show how much school values looking good to colleges versus teaching kids real-world skills and creativity.

[verenal]

The overly complicated academic writing you described reminded me of a chapter in book. In it the protagonist tries to have an intellectual discussion via text message. He becomes frustrated because auto correct doesn’t know many of the academic word choices so he decides to replace them with simpler words. When he is done his previously very elaborate sentence can be boiled down to „thinking is important“ 🤣

[dreimaldie]

As a linguist and a writer I approve of this video so hard!!! Everytime I thought “Wait, but he's forgetting…” the next shot would follow up on it. Very, very well done!

To elaborate on the final point: School teaches a prescriptivist writing style, which is a good base style, truly. But without learning how and when to break the rules, we're raising writers who produce mediocre novels. You read a lot of brilliant fanfiction and novel ideas, executed with great plot, but made unreadable by school approved narration :'(

[Sam_on_YouTube]

Cornell has a Freshman writing requirement. It isn't because incoming students didn't learn the basics of writing, like grammer. It's because we all learned the same 5 paragraph essay format you need for the SATs. Writing needs to change for your target audience. If your target audience is spending 2 minutes per essay while grading them all, then the 5 paragraph essay is good. If you're writing for a professional audience, then removing ambiguitity is more important than clarity. I learned that in law school.

But now, most of my writing is intended to explain complex legal stuff to a wider audience of activists and the style I'm working on is VERY different. I avoid fancy words now.

[SporkleBM]

I just wanna share this experience I had.

I was trying to explain the punette square (the biology thing: predicting the genes/traits of a child based on the genes/traits of the parents) to a younger friend who was just taught it in school.

I had a pretty hard time trying to get her to see what was happening and she still didn't seem to fully get it.

Cue my other friend, ((CHEWIE, YOURE THE BEST!!)), who popped into the conversation and explained the punette square with respect to minecraft. Hear this. He explained to her how when u place a dirt block next to a grass block, it turns to grass. Grass is dominant over dirt blocks; thus making dirt blocks the recessive trait, and grass the dominant.

It was a stroke of genius. She understood the concept immediately!

[dokida]

i took an essay writing class in high school and managed to get an A without turning in a single completed essay. the majority of the class structure was reading a piece of literature and coming up with our own essay subjects relating to the literature - i had undiagnosed adhd at the time so i would come up with a really interesting subject, write the outline, and finish half a draft before giving up. my teacher always really loved my creative thesis statements and ended up letting me just... not turn any completed drafts in lol. i think she must have been someone who really loved literature for what it was, and i like to think she was rebelling against the school structure in what little way she could.

[deepennyway]

So glad to hear someone make the case for "bad writing isn't bad, it's just not fitted to your specific needs as a reader"

[pianoforte]

In school I was a horrible writer - for all the reasons you say. I was writing to try to sound smart. The thing is, it worked. I consistently got the highest marks in literature even though I really didn't understand the subject matter. I just knew the right buzzwords and phrases that the teachers would like.

[jlo]

I'm still in high school. Here in the UK, we're taught to use very specific writing structures that, if we don't follow, will genuinely knock us down marks. No matter how nice and fluent your writing is, no matter how well you convey the point, if you don't follow that structure you're bound to lose marks. It's why I get such low marks on my English essays, because no matter what I prioritise making my writing fluent and nice to read.

[khalilahd.]

I’ve always felt like some literature was written so poorly. Like they care more about word count than they do about getting to the point. It’s annoying 😅

[nuclearseahorse]

I took AP language in high school and it was SUPPOSED to teach me how to communicate ideas of persuasion and literature analysis, but my teacher literally refused to tell us what we were and weren't doing right so I just never learned how to develop an argument. That is, until I started watching video essays in the past few years. Turns out you learn how to improve your writing when you're told what to improve😱

[minutesofyourtime]

I agree with this so much. The worst of the worst is engineering academic papers. Papers are written in sections the bigger words the better. The sentences are so long it becomes dry because you have to make each sentence clear in what you are trying to say and be quotable. It has destroyed my writing

[chris_troiano]

As a writing professor, this matches a lot of concerns my students have from high school. “So you’re saying everything I learned before was wrong?” No, but there are new audiences and genres of writing that will be written in different ways. Also you are older and smarter now.

Decontextualized writing without an audience besides “my teacher” is such a limited experience of what it means to write. I’m glad for that interview at the end, which really got it. I’m looking forward to seeing the whole thing.

Zoe Bee is a former writing professor with some great videos on this topic.

[aetre]

I teach physics, and I've read and reviewed a *lot* of textbooks. Completely unsurprising bottom line: the ones with the most pictures and diagrams with short captions *always* explain things best, both according to me, and to the students I've double-checked with. So maybe if academics want to write better, it might not just be all about the writing; maybe take out a paragraph or two, and put in a nice, useful picture instead.

[HPFireYT]

As someone who is currently having to write a research paper for my art history class… this is extremely relevant. When you have to reread an article that’s basically just saying “here’s some ways people made religious art back in the day” three times just to figure out what the heck is happening you really start questioning why the heck people are like this.

[Merlinthehappypig]

i remember, throughout school, being repeatedly told to stop using the word "and" for example "I opened the door and i felt a cold breeze, and the hallway grew black and distant"
then years later i read Ernest Hemingway and i was like "why is he writing like a child"
After pressing on, i realized Hemingway had one of the most beautiful writing styles ever. Yet, it couldn't be simpler. Hemingway isn't desperately trying to convince you of his greatness with every overcomplicated word or phrase, he's simply telling a story.
I find, to condense something truly beautiful into something small and simple, is where genius lies. Thats why i'll personally always think Shane Mcgowan is a better poet than Lord Byron.

[msmoniz]

This perfectly explains why I, as someone who LOVES to learn, HATED school and didn't aspire to or go to university. I hated having to write to prove knowledge, and the thought of doing that in university after being miserable doing it in high school, is why I preferred and went to college(college in Canada means community college where you receive a diploma in your chosen field, not a degree). I don't regret my choice one bit!