It's not easy ...

... being clear: Prune That Prose.

A friend in mainstream trade publishing, who'd like nothing better than to buy books written by smart people on important topics, cringes when she spies an academic heading toward her at a party. For D and her editorial colleagues, "academic" is shorthand for "lifeless prose, cumbersome to read, filled with unnecessary complication, often disdainful and stridently obscure in style and tone." If by chance they do wind up wanting to acquire a manuscript by a faculty member, the first thing they say at the editorial meeting is: "But he doesn't write like an academic!"

C.S. Lewis thought that no one should be given an advanced degree until he had demonstrated that could take a piece of technical prose and translate it into the common tongue. Lewis understood that jargon had a function as shorthand, but he felt that if you couldn't do without it and make yourself clear in plain English we had every reason to doubt whether you really knew what you were talking about.