Why Academics Stink at Writing

Here’s Steven Pinker’s assessment and advice.  But should we take advice about good writing from an essay that begins with the most trite clichés?

Together with wearing earth tones, driving Priuses, and having a foreign policy, the most conspicuous trait of the American professoriate may be the prose style called academese.

Teddy West, my writing prof from college, would not approve!