> Michael Yates wrote:
>
> >The current issue of Lingua Franca has an interesting article titled,"Is
> >Bad Writing Necessary." On one side naturally is the bete noir of many
> >on these lists, Judith Butler. On the other is our dear friend and
> >list contributor, Katha Pollitt.
>
> Sometimes I think there's no excuse for bad writing, but on the other
> hand, it's not easy to write well, and very few people do. Katha's a
> poet and a fine prose stylist, but how many people can you say that
> about? Science writing is largely terrible - "hard" and "soft"
> sciences; who'd hold up the American Economic Review as anything but
> a negative example (and not just for its prose!)? Butler cut her
> teeth reading Hegel, for god's sake.
>
Orwell was right in "Politics and the English Language." If an idea *can* be expressed simply and clearly, but is instead expressed opaquely and with unnecessary jargon, then there is probably an ulterior motive at work: either the author is trying to euphemize an indefensible idea or he is trying to make his thoughts appear to be the product of some specialized realm of knowledge that is unattainable to the mere mortal.
Seth