Telling Mortals Apart

[okosut]

I was just reading a draft of a paper my adviser sent to me. This is a paper that we're in the process of writing. It has four authors, but the vast majority is actually written by him and me. A week or two ago I wrote up a quick version with what I thought were the most important parts, sent that to him, then he filled in a bit more, and sent it

Comments

I agree

[mathmike]

I read the first 10 words of each, and the second was clearly more of what I would expect in an academic paper. The first sounds more like what I might write myself.

Not that this necessarily says that one is objectively "better", except that it's probably useful for academic papers to sound like academic papers.

Re: I agree

[okosut]

I've come to realize that a lot of what is "sounds like an academic paper" is actually just writing by academics who are bad at writing academic papers (which is, of course, most of it). Once in a while I come across a really well written paper, and I discover that it is absolutely possible to have readability, wit, and humor in an academic paper without it feeling out of place. This is just hard to do.