Checking our writing is fit for purpose

I think most of us find academic writing a bit of a chore. We all need many hints, tips, rules and guides to help to improve the clarity, transparency and directness of our writing: and there are many guides to help us do just that, However, if you have not encountered Kiwi Professor Helen Sword before, she is a fitness guru. A WORD fitness guru. She has written quite a few books about her passion, which will assist us to write tight, fighting-fit academic prose, including:

• Stylish Academic Writing (2012): having analysed 1000+ pan-field peer-reviewed articles, the author shows the chasm espoused 'good writing' and what is actually written by academics. This is a a crisp and concise work on how to deliver academic writing crisply and concisely. Also available as an Audible audiobook :-)
• The Writer's Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose (2016): this book examines how much fat we have in our writing, using either an App (available here) or analysing paragraph by paragraph (here)
• Air & Light & Time & Space (2017): this work uses 'BASE' as a frame: Behavioral ideas of discipline and persistence; Artisanal aspects of craftsmanship and care; Social elements of collegiality and collaboration; and Emotional habits of positivity and pleasure. With BASE, the author works through the complex nature of writing, highlighting the lack of support available to early-career academics in developing writing skills
• Writing with Pleasure (2023): Professor Sword "provides [us with] research-based principles, hands-on strategies, and creative 'pleasure prompts' designed to help [us] ramp up [our] productivity and enhance the personal rewards of [our] writing practice" (Goodreads, 2024)

I have Professor Sword's first and second books (2012, 2016). I like the Writer's Diet book, though I find the online analysis tool somewhat demoralising. I have not been able to get the app (2024a) to work on my PC at home, which leaves me with the more limited online writing test of 300 words (2024b). 

My writing remains a work in progress... but I guess that illustrates what fitness is - a life-long practice :-)

Sam

References:

GoodReads. (2024). Writing with Pleasure [review]. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60564514-writing-with-pleasure

Sword, H. (2012). Stylish Academic Writing. Harvard University Press.

Sword, H. (2016). The Writer's Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose. University of Chicago Press.

Sword, H. (2017). Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write. Harvard University Press.

Sword, H. (2023). Writing with Pleasure: Skills for Scholars. Princeton University Press.

Sword, H. (2024a). The Writer's Diet App. https://writersdiet.com/writers-diet-microsoft-word-app/

Sword, H. (2024b). The Writer's Diet Writing Test. https://writersdiet.com/writing-test/