How We Train University Students to Write Poorly (with Addendum)
When I was in the hunt for a tenure-track university position, I attended a mentoring session on how to publish led by Linda Hutcheon, who was, at that moment, the newly hottest thing in Canadian postmodernist theory and criticism. “Writing a thesis,” she told us, “was an exercise in covering your ass.” There was nothing shocking or striking in her declaration; it was a well-worn bromide, a truism. No-one in the audience blinked.
I began my teaching career giving one-on-one instruction in administrative writing (among other things) to civil servants working for the Government of Canada. Those were the days when “writing style” meant being able to express yourself in clear, crisp and concise prose (without overdoing the alliteration). Around the same time, a journalist, with the Ottawa daily, The Citizen, wrote a regular column on effective writing. In one of his articles, he constructed the following fable to explain why and how government administrators deliberately wrote poorly…
I began my teaching career giving one-on-one instruction in administrative writing (among other things) to civil servants working for the Government of Canada. Those were the days when “writing style” meant being able to express yourself in clear, crisp and concise prose (without overdoing the alliteration). Around the same time, a journalist, with the Ottawa daily, The Citizen, wrote a regular column on effective writing. In one of his articles, he constructed the following fable to explain why and how government administrators deliberately wrote poorly…
