This is not Good Academic Writing

Contrary to what some people think, this is not good academic writing:

The theory of [redacted] that have [sic] been presented in this paper [not that she actually, like, presented it ] could considered as plausible theoretical guesswork that could illuminate that presumed cognitive imaginative devices that led to the conceptualization of the initiatory experiences and their incorporation in the wider narrative life-story …. [it goes on].

That sentence fails the “Who did what?” test. It could be revised as “Blank’s theory does XXX because YYY.”

But I think it deserves as Author’s Query to that effect, because I really cannot tell what the writer wishes to communicate here.

There is a verb, however. Several, in fact. We have something to work with. But what should be the main verb?

Glass of red wine time.

9 thoughts on “This is not Good Academic Writing

  1. Ah! You were on the receiving end. Get it now. That’s why you are going to invest the time into deciphering the “sentence.” You can’t just send it back with a “thank you, but no”?

  2. Pitch313

    The comment that I am, perhaps, about to make could be conceived to illustrate the ambiguity of conceptual deconstruction in the presence of existential doubt and corn flakes mutated by dummo rays, combined through the interaction of chaotic entities and laughing Higgs Bosons among toll bridges defined by legions of time travel to have sex with your own grammar.

    Or not.

  3. Medeina: You assume that the writer is American.

    Actually, it should be “your education euros at work,” which means
    that the writer has successfully reproduced bad academic writing
    in a non-native language.

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