alt Hacker NewsA few decades back when I was a PhD student a British university I taught an undergraduate class and I noticed that the quality of writing in their examination papers and projects was clunky and awkward, in contrast to the admirable, free-flowing, everyday style the way they wrote (as they spoke) on their student bulletin boards. I used to wonder why they didn't write like this in their classwork.
Years later, when writing my thesis I'd routinely find myself at a loss of how to communicate a concept. The solution was always to write down my answer to the question "what are you trying to say".
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The sociologist Bourdieu has written about social capital and the impact of the ductus people aquire. Simplified this is why rich people of old money do not respect the new rich: Sure they have the money, but they do not have the taste, the manierisms, the language, etc. Being part of that part of society is more than just having money.
These details are a more important mechanism for social groups to differenciate themselves with than most people consciously realise in their day to day lives. Yet we constantly decide by minor details that someone does or does not belong to a group. Maybe a steelworker will notice by the way you talk that you never worked in manual labor even if you dress the part.
Most people tend to have multiple such learned manierisms, meaning you will walk, sit, talk differently with your male friends than in an academic setting or with your family for example.
So when young students enter university they undergo a massive adjustment phase where they relate their existing manierisms to the new manierisms they encounter. This is all in order to become and stay part of the group. There is of course a perception how one "is supposed to" write in academia and students try to emulate this to the best of their ability, which may or may not yield good results. Eventually they find their own academic language and aquired tastes.
Something to add to your brain's STEERING.md file then.
Young academics try to signal that they know what they’re doing so they end up cargo-culting dense technical writing that they can’t yield well and just end up with bad writing.
It takes a lot of confidence to write academic material in a natural conversational tone because they’ve internalized a rule that says “if it’s easy to understand, I won’t come off as smart enough to belong”.