“I Know What I Mean…” But do they? - When Academic Writing Doesn’t Quite Land
There’s a special kind of heartbreak in academic writing. That moment when you hand someone your draft confident, hopeful, even a little proud… and they return it with a puzzled look and a polite, “I wasn’t quite sure what you meant here.”
It’s not that your ideas aren’t good. You’ve done the reading, mapped the logic, made all the right connections in your head. You know what you mean.
But something’s been lost in translation.
The Curse of Knowing Too Much
Academic writing is often hard to follow not because the ideas are too complex, but because the writer has been living inside them for too long.
When you’re immersed in your topic, it’s easy to forget what’s obvious to you isn’t obvious to everyone else. You skip steps, collapse concepts, and rely on shorthand that makes perfect sense in your head but not on the page.
This creates writing that feels dense, disjointed, or vague to your reader… though clear to you.
Common Signs Your Writing Isn’t Landing
If you’ve ever written a sentence that made total sense, only to be met with glazed eyes or a reviewer’s “unclear,” you’re not alone. Here are some red flags to watch for:
Your sentences are technically grammatical but exhausting to read.
You overuse terms like “this,” “it,” or “such” without specifying what they refer to.
A key idea only shows up once - buried halfway through a paragraph.
You assume the reader knows the same background as you.
You re-read a section five times and still can’t tell if it’s saying what you meant.
It’s not that your thinking is bad, but these could be signs your writing is outpacing your reader’s context.
What You Can Do About It
The goal here isn’t to dumb down your ideas, it’s to build a bridge from your head to someone else’s. Here’s how to start:
1. Don’t Just Edit, Test Your Draft
Find someone outside your immediate field and ask them to read a section. Watch where they pause. Listen to their questions. If they’re confused, you’ve found a clarity gap - not a flaw, just a spot that needs scaffolding.
Tip: Ask them to summarise your paragraph in one sentence. If they miss your point, it’s not on them, it’s on the writing.
2. Read Your Work Out Loud
Yes, it’s awkward. But it works. Reading aloud exposes clunky phrasing, runaway sentences, and places where your writing loses rhythm or meaning. If you trip over a sentence, chances are your reader will too.
Tip: Use text-to-speech software to “hear” your writing from a distance. The robotic tone makes awkwardness even easier to spot.
3. Clarify Your “This” and “It”
Ambiguous reference is one of the most common culprits of unclear writing. Every time you use a word like this, that, it, which, or such, pause and ask: what exactly am I referring to?
Fix: Instead of “This suggests,” write “This pattern of results suggests…” It adds a few words but saves a lot of confusion.
4. Break Up Your Thinking
Your brain loves nesting. Embedding one thought inside another. Your reader, less so. Split long sentences. Separate linked ideas. Give each insight room to breathe.
Fix: If your sentence has three commas and two em dashes, it’s probably doing too much. Break it in two.
5. Write for Clarity First, Style Later
Complexity in writing should come from your ideas and not your syntax. Aim for clarity first. You can always add flourish once your structure is solid.
Reminder: If your sentence needs a second reading to be understood, rework it until it doesn’t.
Academic writing often gets treated like a performance… a way to prove you belong. But the best writing doesn’t perform. It explains. It guides. It helps someone else see what you see.
So if your draft isn’t landing yet, don’t panic. It just means you’re still building the bridge between knowing and telling.
