Happy Everyone Writes Day
Also featured: My last three articles were boosted by Medium editors!
Apparently today is national everyone writes day, and I love this.
I love to write. I particularly love to write about topics near and dear to my heart, such as neurodiversity, psychology, parenting, education, and mental health. It’s important to me to publish accessible articles which allow anyone and everyone to learn about these subjects if they so choose.
Academic writing can be, at times, esoteric and inaccessible.
I am happy to see a relatively recent trend of adding a “lay” abstract to the beginning of articles, to help people without a similar background to the authors understand the essential content of their research.
Regardless of one’s education level, reading journal articles from a field outside of one’s expertise (and sometimes even within one’s area of study!) can be arduous and psychologically painful.
Sometimes it’s necessary. We can’t all be experts in all fields, and it’s important for researchers to publish their work to be scrutinized by other experts within their niche.
Other times it’s not.
If someone with a strong academic background and reading comprehension skills reads an academic article and cannot understand the general concepts being explained, or the purpose and conclusions of their research, then it’s not a well-written article by any standards.
Let me say that again.
If fellow nerds and keen readers of research and other academic literature cannot make heads or tails of a published paper, then it is not well-written. Writing over the heads of 99% of the population is an exercise in futility. It’s wasted effort, time, and money.
The fundamental purpose of research is to further scientific discussion and inquiry, to inform policy and practice, and to contribute to the current body of knowledge on a particular subject.
This means contributing to everyone’s knowledge, not just the very few who can decipher an unnecessarily complex, jargon-filled bit of writing.
On that note
If I might engage in a little bit of self-congratulation, I am proud to share that my last three articles were all boosted by the editors over on Medium!
Each were part of a series: one about the importance of multicultural competence in the helping professions, and another about emotional regulation skills.
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