Academic-style writing persists because it works

Academic-style writing is characterized by defensive or hedging language, an abundance of citations, and being overly charitable to the opposing side by writing for the most skeptical reader in mind or anticipating objections. However, it’s criticized as being inauthentic or ambiguous. Or it reads as if the writer is prevaricating or beating around the bush instead of just saying what is on his or her mind. This can make the writing seem confusing or needlessly complex.

For example, the below tweet went viral about the overuse of citations to smuggle in an opinion as fact:

In addition to citations, a related characteristic is the ‘the wall of links’ style, in which an entire paragraph of an article is composed of hyperlinks instead of footnotes, or an excessive number of links are peppered throughout the article, similar to Wikipedia. I observed this as far back in 2017, but now it’s become ubiquitous. For example, the second paragraph of an Atlantic article about USB-C connectors has six outgoing links compared to the other paragraphs having few or no links:

So what can explain the apparent disconnect between academic-style writing being so heavily criticized yet so persistent? Because it works. Or in terms of revealed vs. stated preferences, people may say they like frank, direct writing, but then always choose the academic-style writing. No one is going to say, “I love lots of footnotes in writing.” Or that academic-style writing tends to be more successful, controlling for platform size or name recognition. Even for writers who have no academic affiliation and are trying to be seen in a crowded marketplace of pundits, it works.

See for example the blogger Gwern, whose articles are full of citations and they almost always go viral. I am always seeing his articles on Reddit or Hacker News. Just as it’s hard to beat the stock market, it’s hard to beat the marketplace of ideas. We think we know best, but the marketplace knows better. Adding lots of citations conveys invaluable credibility to winning over the skeptical reader even if no one bothers to read the source material, as it’s often assumed they won’t. Others bloggers include Scott Alexander and Dan Lu, who also use lots footnotes or links, but also a more conversational tone. Or Matt Levine of Bloomberg, who uses lots of footnotes. These are just a handful of many.

The aforementioned bloggers hedge a lot and also are charitable to the opposing side/team. Hedging language is typically thought of as a negative, but it also shows intellectual humility. Academic-style writing is often criticized for being indirect or wordy, yet we can clearly see such writers are hugely successful with this format and style; and importantly, this success tends to be organic, without the need for an existing platform and artificial social proof. The perceived boost of credibility helps the content go viral but possibly at the cost of being harder to read. Which as writer, having the work be read is preferable to being ignored.

The pushback against academic-style writing, if I had to guess, is about a longing for the pre-2013 or so era of the internet, before everything was turned into a brand or optimized for engagement, whether it’s ad-tracking or thumbnails and headline chosen to maximize clickthrough rates. Same for the listicles that dominated during the Cracked, pre-2013-era, which were bereft of links or citations or only used sparingly.

It’s often asked if blogging is dead. It’s not dead in so far as academic-style blog posts are concerned, as often seen on Substack or op-eds. But blogging–as in 300-word brain dumps composed at a whim without careful editing and attentiveness at the choice of language–that style is dead in so far that it does not go viral. Same for hastily-composed LiveJournal entries. Twitter has largely occupied that role now.

Ribbonfarm put it well, contrasting the older gritter style of blogging with the newer refined style:

On Substack, the mere prospect of making money reliably (something the blogosphere was spectacularly shitty at, and remains so in its dotage) seems to get people to adopt a more respectable demeanor, and second-guess the shitposting instincts that would have served them well in the blogosphere at its peak. The blogosphere didn’t so much move to Substack as get gentrified by it, much as they’d like you to believe it did. And many of us transplanted bloggers got a shave and haircut, put on a suit, and went to work there, shoulder-to-shoulder with the old media types we once maintained ritual rivalries with, but are now increasingly indistinguishable from.

Legacy media, with its large editorial teams and professional writers, finally caught up and made full use of social media and apps, displacing those gritty, old-school-style blogs. In other words, blogging grew up as corporations and academics took over the medium, overtaking the informal weblog. So now you’re forced to either use Twitter for more terse or extemporaneous thoughts, or on other extreme, having to turn everything into a mini-thesis.

Academic-style writing is just the latest iteration of the evolution of online writing. As for the overuse of hedging language, this is because concepts in the social sciences are inherently imprecise, unlike the ‘hard’ sciences. Physics has literal constants–values that never change and are universally recognized by their symbols (e.g. g for gravity or c for the speed of light). As discussed earlier, writing is an inherently difficult medium in which readers are less forgiving of errors or fallacies compared to other mediums of content. Painting with too broad of a brush may work for a documentary (e.g. anything by Michael Moore) or Twitter, but it doesn’t work when it comes to short-form non-fiction for a discriminating audience.

Overall, academic-style writing persists because it works. Otherwise, it would save a lot of time to write in a more informal tone or to not have to use citations. The marketplace is evidently rewarding these people greatly with huge subscriber counts and virality. I trust the marketplace more than armchair experts who insist that being blunt is better or disparage academic-style writing. Until academic-style writing stops being as successful as it is, I don’t see any reason for it to fall out of favor, as much as people may also complain about it.