How Not to Write: Academic Bullshit (+3 Challenge Problems and Answers w/ Explanations)

Some of you know I'm fond of discussing bullshit. I don't mean that I like to bullshit you; I just like talking about bullshit as a social phenomenon and analyzing it through a philosophical lens. Well, good for me...because bullshit saturates not only speech, but also writing. This is especially true in academic writing, which frequently contains what the philosopher G.A. Cohen would call "unclarifiable unclarity". Victoria Dailey lampoons this kind of bullshit in her post, "Pride and Prejudice," Translated into Academiotics, in The New Yorker: 

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Translation:
The heterogeneity of assumed intentions may incur a conclusory stereotype regarding gender selections in marriage-based societies, especially in those where the masculine hegemony of capital resources presupposes the feminization of property and uxorial acquisition.

Granted, the "translation" above may not qualify as "unclarifiable unclarity". A reasonably intelligent individual who knows his or her vocabulary (very well) would have no trouble understanding the gist of the passage. But (1) Who the hell writes for reasonably intelligent individuals who know their vocabulary around here? (You're writing for god-knows-who-works-for-College-Board, who only has so much time to skim your essay) and (2) Even if such writing is "clarifiable", why would you want to write like that at the risk of sounding either like a snobbish poo-poo head or a wannabe scholar? No reason. No reason at all.

Click below for challenge problems.

3. The campus newspaper does not print as much world news as does my hometown.
(A) as does my hometown
(B) as does my hometown newspaper
(C) compared to what my hometown does
(D) like my hometown newspaper does
(E) like the one in my hometown does

4. During the labor dispute, barrels of potatoes were emptied across the highway, and they thereby blocked it to all traffic.
(A) highway, and they thereby blocked it to all traffic
(B) highway and therefore blocking it to all traffic
(C) highway, by which all traffic was therefore blocked
(D) highway, and therefore this had all traffic blocked
(E) highway, thereby blocking all traffic

9. Having command of pathos, tragedy, as well as humor, George Eliot is considered to be a great English novelist.
(A) Having command of pathos, tragedy, as well as humor
(B) Having command of pathos, tragedy, and her humorous side
(C) By being in command of both pathos and tragedy and also humor
(D) With her command of pathos and tragedy and being humorous
(E) Because of her command of pathos, tragedy, and humor

Answers: BEE

Explanations:
3. (A) mistaken comparison between a campus newspaper and a hometown. Wrong. (B) solves the problem. (C) too wordy. (D) even wordier. (E) even wordier.

4. (A) wordy. contains unnecessary/ambiguous pronoun, "it" and unnecessary preposition "to". (B) same problem. (C) redundant, since "by which" and "therefore" more or less have the same function. (D) the pronoun "this" is ambiguous, and the answer choice is wordy. (E) is correct.

9. (A) is a tempting answer choice, but it is wrong because of the slightly awkward "having" and the not-so-parallel and slightly wordy phrase, "as well as". (B) is not parallel. (C) not parallel. (D) parallel. (E) is correct. "Pathos", "tragedy", and "humor" are all nouns. "And" connects the words up nicely. It is logical and grammatically correct to use the word "because" there.