A 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".

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”.

Something to add to your brain's STEERING.md file then.