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Ugh, I just got an email from LSAC saying that tomorrow's test has been cancelled at my assigned test center (Chemeketa Community College in Salem, OR). I seriously can't believe this! There isn't even snow in the forecast, it's just cold. Is there anyone else here who's affected by this??? The email says "Next week we will contact you by email regarding options, including a make-up administration." I hope this doesn't delay the reporting of my score. I'm already submitting my applications way later than I had intended. :-(
I couldn't for the life of me make sense of this, so I Googled it, and the wording above is slightly different from the original:
"My guess is that disciplines that are populated by smart, well-educated people who are good readers but are nevertheless characterized by crummy, turgid, verbose, abstruse, abstract, solecism-ridden prose are usually part of a discipline where the dynamic between WRITING AS A vector of meaning—as a way to get information or opinion from me to you—versus writing as maybe a form of dress or speech or style or etiquette that signals that “I am a member of this group” gets thrown off."
I find it somewhat ironic that this was a response to the question, "Why do so many English professors write so poorly?" (unless it was meant as a joke).
My main issue with it is that it boils down to "Disciplines that are populated by smart people but are also characterized by bad writing are usually part of a DISCIPLINE..." What? How can a discipline be part of a discipline?
Anyway, the point is that smart professionals like English professors and attorneys sometimes write poorly because the discipline they are in exerts a sort of social pressure to conform to certain established norms. They get caught up in using fanciful or overly dense language to impress their readers at the expense of clarity.