Utilize Clear Language

If I never again see the word "utilize" in a textbook, I'll be a happier man.

A recent article, Don't 'Problematize' Anything, had me shouting "Yes!" Which really startled the cat dozing in front of my monitor. The article discusses various issues that came up in a panel discussion, including this one:

I could see folks in the audience squirming in their seats when someone said, "Don’t problematize anything. Avoid words like historicity, materiality, hegemony, paradigmatic, judicialize, conceptualize, experientialize." The panelists agreed: Words that end in "ize" are bad. Looking through the titles on the program, it’s clear they’re also endemic in academic writing. —Rachel Toor 

Which brings to mind the word "utilize." I've come to abhor that word. Why? Because those extra two syllables are not needed in most cases. In my opinion. Unless your goal is to sound smarter or "more scholarly." But in my mind, that's exactly what makes it sound a bit pretentious when used in a textbook.

As Joshua Rothman suggested a few years ago in The New Yorker article Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?, using the less "ordinary" language of academic writing may be what's needed to publish in certain journals or gain tenure. Okay. But when trying to help students—perhaps undergraduate students who have challenges of many sorts—why not use "ordinary" language?

Why not simply use the word "use" instead?

In fact, a while back I did a search of the entire draft of my largest textbook (over 1200 pages) and got rid of every "utilize," save one that was in a quote from American Medical Association. That's how much that word bothers me.

In fact, it's a constant struggle for me to watch that my vocabulary remains "ordinary" and my sentence structure avoids unnecessary complexity. However, I think my constant vigilance has slowly improved the quality of my textbooks and, at the same time, honed my skills in writing for students.

Again, I know that academic vocabulary and complex sentence structure are part of how educated folk are supposed to write. Perhaps even using unnecessary jargon. But that doesn't make it right for textbooks. Or, at least, it doesn't make it clear. And writing with clarity is essential in textbooks, if not in all scholarly writing.

I'll end with a quote from Russel Jacoby that I had taped up in my writing studio for many years:

As intellectuals became academics, they had no need to write in a public prose; they did not, and finally they could not.

4 Books for Textbook Authors to Read on National Author's Day

Greetings on National Author's Day!

What better way to celebrate than to begin a journey through a fellow author's work, eh?

Here are four books I recommend for textbook authors that have helped form my perspective on writing educational material.


Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott.

Besides the fact that I love Lamott's informal and humorous storytelling, this book is one of the best books by a successful writer on on authoring that I've read.  And I've read a few.

The title is based on advice given by Lamott's father to her overwhelmed brother when he realized that the report on birds that he had months to write was due the next day. Dad advised, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird." What textbook author can't relate to that as we start a new project or revision?


Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel.

Written for students and teachers in an engaging, nontechnical style, this book identifies some key concepts in how we best learn for the long term. It turns out that there are some surprises revealed by recent learning research that turn some of the long-held ideas about learning upside down. Many of the techniques we have used help us learn for the next test, but do little if anything to help us "make it stick" in the long term.

When I was a new teacher, I was SO frustrated that my students seemed to remember nothing from their prior courses. Then I realized that no matter who their teacher or which school they attended before, this was just the way it is. I learned that my energy is better spent getting my students up to speed than to complain about their prior learning. And on changing my techniques to bolster long-term learning. After reading this book, I realized that it's the common methods of teaching and learning, not the failures of prior schools or teachers, that make my students underprepared. It confirmed some of the techniques I'd begun using in my courses and introduced me to others.

When we write textbooks, we teach. So I've been trying to adapt the emerging principles of learning science in my writing. This book has been a useful guidebook for that journey.


The last two (of four) books I'm recommending today have already been reviewed by me in recent posts, so I'll just list them here and link them to those previous posts.


Writing and Developing Your College Textbook: A Comprehensive Guide by Mary Ellen Lepionka, Sean Wakely, and Steve Gillen.

This new edition is available for pre-order for a December 2016 release.


Guide to Textbook Publishing Contracts by Steve Gillen

Short, well-illustrated book that every textbook author should use when reading, negotiating, or re-negotiating a publishing contract.

Writing and Developing Your College Textbook: A Comprehensive Guide

The title of this book says it all, it truly is as comprehensive a guide to getting a textbook project off the ground (and keeping it going) as one could imagine.

Honestly, I had some reservations about the Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA) jumping with both feet into publishing books themselves. But this is the second book I’ve seen come out of that effort and both are outstanding in their usefulness and their instructional design. I’m a believer now, TAA!

(See my previous review of Guide to Textbook Publishing Contracts.)

As a book of 320 pages, one is always concerned about whether it’s just too big to be very useful for a busy academic. Nothing to worry about, there!

First, the book is thoughtfully “chunked” into parts, chapter, sections, and subsections—making both reading and “raiding” the book easily accomplished. You can learn more about “the art of chunking” on p. 164.

Second, the internal design features many lists, tables, samples, graphics, and sidebars that organize the information visually. We all know that this helps any user find information and build a conceptual framework for how it all fits together.

Most importantly, perhaps, is that the text narrative is written in a direct, conversational style that tells the story of what’s involved in developing your own textbook. It’s like having a team of mentors sitting on your shelf, ready to give advice whenever you need it.

When I hear about a new guide or manual, I want to know who created it. Is it someone who can reliably be a virtual mentor to me? For this guide, we have three main authors who exceed usual expectations in that regard:

• Mary Ellen Lepionka has done it all: professor, author, editor, publisher. 
• Sean Wakely brings his wide and deep editorial and textbook development expertise. 
• Steve Gillen is a former publishing attorney who has been in private practice representing textbook authors for decades. 

I’ve experienced and benefited from the work of all three for a long time, so I’m not surprised that their collaboration has produced such a useful guide.

Besides the main authors, the guide is sprinkled with brief “Author to Author” essays written by textbook authors whose long experience ranges widely in discipline, publishers, types of textbooks, and personal style of authorship. They tell stories that clarify how textbook authorship isn’t simply something “on the side” of your main career, but is a profession unto itself—one that has all the intricacies, jargon, customs, and pitfalls of any professional endeavor.  In short, they tell you why you need this guide!

Of course, no guide like this can tell you everything, but I can’t find any important topic that isn’t considered (at some level) in its pages. And I really tried to find one!

I wish I’d had such a helpful and thorough guide when I started working on textbooks thirty years ago. But I’m glad to have it now. It will help me keep up to date on current trends in my profession—and get advice on specific topics from trusted colleagues.

I looked at a pre-publication copy for this review, but you can download a free 17-page sample by visiting this page at TAA's website:

Writing and Developing Your College Textbook: 

A Comprehensive Guide 

Fill out the form in the pop-up window, or click the circular "download" button on the page.

Let's Avoid Using Unnecessary Jargon in our Textbooks!

One of my pet peeves is textbook narrative that uses undefined or overused jargon in a way that make the text murkier, rather than making communication clearer—which is how jargon is best used.

Even terms like "utilize" when "use" will work just as well makes a textbook less accessible.  And I think it gives students the impression that obtuse language is what is expected of them in their own communications—not a desired outcome.

Here's a great article on the subject.

A call to arms: let's get rid of all the jargon!

By Baden Eunson, Monash University

In this high-tech, gee-whiz world, more and more people seem to speak in jargon or, as I like to call it, gibberish. Whether it’s exclusive terms understandable by only a certain few, buzz-words intended to impress in meetings, or euphemisms to make something seem better than it is, the use of jargon really does little more than confuse the listener.

Jargon tends to go through three stages:

1. Jargon starts out as a simple technical sublanguage: users devise abbreviations and acronyms that help speed up processes. It also helps reinforce group solidarity in that it becomes a semi-private language, but with clarity its main aim.


2. Jargon can go over to the dark side when it is so dense that “outsiders” have difficulty understanding it. Euphemisms and deception may creep into the discourse of the in-crowd’s private language. Organisations may become less transparent, crisis-prone and unable to communicate with external people.


3. Jargon becomes an object of ridicule in some quarters, with counter-jargon springing up as a defence mechanism used by the out-group (i.e. the majority). Jargon may prevail, however, as a means of maintaining organisational and social control.

Do people understand jargon?

George Orwell realised that one of the best ways to tackle jargon is via humour: this, for example, is from his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language:

Author provided

Unfortunately, anti-language like Orwell’s parody is heard in offices and boardrooms every day almost 70 years after he put typewriter to paper. The numbers in the table refer to readability.
Readability scores have been around for almost a century, but they are still a work in progress. Rudolph Flesch developed his Flesch reading ease score in the 1940s. Peter Kincaid modified it for the US Navy in the 1970s to produce what is probably the most widely used readability score, the Flesch-Kincaid score.

Flesch’s score could be applied to any text, with texts with perfect clarity scoring 100 and impenetrable gobbledegook scoring zero. Kincaid saw some difficulties with people understanding this, and took some of Flesch’s stats and turned them into school grade levels of understandability, based upon vocabulary awareness tests of students at different levels.

Thus the prophet in the desert scores 78.3 Flesch and 8.4 on Flesch-Kincaid (someone with 8.4 years of post-kindergarten English should be able to understand this). The parody would require 27.1 years of schooling to understand (that’s several PhDs beyond year 12).

Jargon in every day use

How often do we hear jargon like this parody? Try this one from former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd:

What you saw even prior to the end of the Cold War here, of course, was the evolution of a series of confidence and security-building measures coming off the back of CSCE, OSCE and the Helsinki accords. There has to be a greater synergy between, let’s call it our policy leadership in this, which has been focused so much, legitimately, on targets and global architecture, almost reverse-engineered back to the means by which you can quickly deliver outcomes, and on the demand side in our economy we’re looking at potential advances in terms of 20 to 25% range if you do this across the board. It all takes cost, but let me tell you it’s probably the quickest lever you can pull given the challenges we face.

Using the same readability checker, Rudd scores 15.9 on Flesch-Kincaid readability. Given that 46% of Australians aged 15 and over have a skill level for prose literacy less than what is seen as required to meet the demands of everyday life, most of the people who elected this prime minister would not have a clue what he was talking about.

Some jargon is invented to cover up an unpleasant truth, like getting the sack (coerced transition, decruitment, work force imbalance correction) or making your job sound more prestigious. Take these jargonistic euphemisms:

• Automotive internists (car mechanics)


• Vertical transportation corps (elevator operators)


• Initiate a career enhancement program (lay off workers)


• Negative patient care outcome (the patient died)


• Rapid oxidation (fire in a nuclear power plant)


• Pre-emptive counter attack (home forces attacked first)


• Engaged the enemy on all sides (troops were ambushed)


• Backloading of augmentation personnel (retreat by troops)


• Pre-dawn vertical insertion (invasion)

How to avoid jargon

Orwell realised that word choice was often the source of jargon, or anti-plain English:

Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers.

We in the Anglosphere are fortunate in having had England invaded by French soldiers and Latin scholars, because it has dramatically enhanced our vocabulary (English has about one million words, while French and German only have about 200-300,000). So how do we stop falling prey to, or becoming perpetrators of, jargon?

• Install a readability checker on your word processor and use it to see how your text is going (bearing in mind that they are rough-and-ready figures)


• Use shorter words where longer words can be replaced


• Use shorter sentences


• Remember your audience: will they be able to understand your communication?


• If you must use complex words or acronyms, provide a glossary


• Stay in Phase One of jargon development - don’t let insecurity, contempt for others or a need for control get in the way of good communication


• Use humour to ridicule jargon junkies: look at Dack’s Bullshit Generator - a table that allows you to combine verb, adjective and noun to form completely meaningless jargon like “facilitating holistic mindshare”!


• Learn and practise Plain English.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Photo credit: Will Taylor