In an effort to look at how the official style is used
today I looked at the article Cannabis
and Athletic Performance which was published in the academic journal Sports Medicine. The article from
September 2021 is focused on the effects that cannabis can have on athletic
performance. Marijuana is one of the most commonly used recreational substances
in the world and researchers have begun looking into other uses for the
substances. This particular article was looking at the effect consuming
marijuana has on athletic performance. As I understand, the intended audience
was other researchers in the field of sports medicine, athletic trainers, and
athletes themselves. The entire article was written in the official style. I
believe that this was done to establish credibility for the authors and their
writing as well as attempt to make sure potentially obscure information was completely
communicated.
As mentioned previously the entire article was written
in the official style. The intention of this is to establish credibility so
that the research that they are talking about in their journal is taken
seriously by others in their field. In fields like sports medicine authors need
to ensure that whoever reads their article can trust that they know what they
are talking about in their article as well as their actual research. If readers
don’t trust that the people writing the articles know what they are talking
about then the entire article becomes useless because nobody will take the
information seriously. If all of this research isn’t looked at sincerely then
people won't use it as a stepping stone to the discovery of more knowledge.This
is the case with all kinds of writing, not just scientific pieces . You want
your readers to be able to trust that you understand the topics that you are
writing about, but as mentioned above, in scientific writing it is especially
important. There is little room for interpretation in science and because of
that writers need to ensure that they can communicate their knowledge on the
subject while knowing that their audience will believe that they know what they
are talking about.
Writing in the scientific realm also makes it more
difficult for authors to avoid the official style. Because there is so much
scientific/domain specific language, it makes the piece of writing more
jargonistic than pieces in other fields. The vast majority of people might not know
what “putative endogenous
cannabinoid receptors'' are but others in the field would rather you say that
than “the places in your body where cannabis binds to” because it shows that
you have specific knowledge on the subject. Jargonistic pieces like this one
tend to exclude a large portion of readers because only a select few have the
background knowledge to understand what is being talked about. While the
official style is usually used this way to intentionally exclude people, I do
not believe that is the case with this piece of writing. The authors are almost
forced into the exclusion of others just to prove that they know what they are
talking about. I believe that this is one of the problems with the official
style of writing. Writers are forced to exclude people from fully enjoying and
learning from their work just to prove that they can be trusted. It should not
matter what style you write in as long as the information you are presenting is
correct, unfortunately that is not the case in the academic community. As of
right now it seems that the academic community relies on something I’ll call
“trickle down knowledge”. What I mean by that is that people in the scientific
community write just to be understood and trusted by one another. They then
count on others to transcribe what they discovered and spread it to the general
public. Would it not be more efficient to write in a way that allows anybody to
access the information? I understand that the jargon will always be there, as
that is just the nature of scientific writing, but I think that it could
benefit from trying to be less dry and more focused on just effectively
communicating what has been discovered and what can be learned.
That
is why I believe a shift away from the official style is needed. So many people
and ideas are ignored simply because they do not look and sound like they are
“supposed to”. The main focus on different pieces of writing should be the
content and what the author is trying to communicate to their audience. It
doesn’t matter if it is a piece of legislation, scientific findings, or an
on-campus announcement, the content of the piece should be the focus, not how
it is written. Writing should be for everyone. In my article, Cannabis and Athletic Performance, for
example they say “The ability of cannabis and THC to perturb cardiovascular
homeostasis warrants further investigation regarding mechanisms by which
performance may be affected across different exercise modalities and energetic
demands”. This is a really long and complex way of saying that “weed affects
the way that your body sends blood to places and could be a potential way to
increase athletic performance”. The whole point of the article is to get that
information out to people so that, if they live someplace where it is legal,
they can see how it affects their training and performance. By using the
official style the authors are isolating a large portion of their audience.
Oftentimes people are capable of understanding complex and jargonistic pieces
but choose not to simply because they are dense and do not get to the point.
The official style is especially bad when used in informative pieces, because
they should be straight to the point and communicate the information
effectively. The official style interferes with this smooth transmission of
information and should be avoided.
I
do understand that there may be some pushback to this for a number of reasons.
The official style has been around for so long that moving away from it almost
seems blasphemous at this point. But like everything else it is good to grow
and evolve which is what I believe we should do with the way we write. The
official style is nice in the sense that it gives any piece of writing the air
of importance and just writing that way offers an increase in credibility to
the author. However, these benefits would effectively disappear if everybody
agreed to shift towards plain style as the choice for academic writing. The
official style is so ingrained into society's idea of what a “proper” piece of
writing should sound like that it will be tough to start the change, but once
people start to realize the benefits of using more plain language I think that
it will start to gain traction in all kinds of communities. Even certain types
of writing, such as academic or scientific pieces, don’t completely switch. I
think any decrease in official style would be a benefit.
From
the insight into the official style and a look at the article from Sports Medicine, I hope that you can see
the ill effects that the official style can bring about. In trying to establish
credibility, the authors were forced to make their writing less clear,
jargonistic, and less accessible. I believe that a shift away from the official
style is needed, especially with informative pieces like this one to help
ensure that the exchanging of ideas around the world continues and is as
effective as possible.
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