Your work/academic voice, do you hate it?

Also I can't bring myself to write informally about music cos I'd go all ILM on their ass!

Don't tempt me Matt, I have loads of cans in the fridge.

i'm finishing writing a paper right now, and i'm not keen on the way i write academic stuff, eg

The current paper resulted from work by the author on
generalisations of the results of \cite{CV} to the Hilbert case.
One needs semistable models of certain Shimura curves not covered
by \cite{fra}; these are constructed below, using the techniques
of \cite{KM}.

Hello I'm Ronan, nice to meet you, whoever you are.

"3: As concluded by gaggle of interweb mentalists, 3-5 Apr 2003."

In our Irish Presidency essay last year I talked about how so many presidential candidates have been known for their extra political activities rather than their political ones, and then I said "except Dana, who is remembered for all kinds of everything". I bet he loved it really.

Thing is despite his age and trendy Adidas I reckon M*rk O'Brien (thats our lecturer) has absolutely no interest in music whatsoever, I think he said he didn't own any cds in the class. Maybe better that way actually.

I'm doing number 8, just finished it actually, it is passable.

[sell] Are you and your crew growing up together or growing apart? Take our quiz to see if your girls are for life.

(Your crew. It sickens me.)

More on topic: isn't one person's academic voice pretty much the same as another? I always felt okay with writing like that since I was in my 'student' role.

"One of the suggestions that is coming forth from the revision of space planning blueprints is the combination of the Main Library Reserves desk and its holdings with the Main Library Loan Desk. This would bring the Main Library in line with the Science Library, where both desks have been similarly combined since the opening of that facility, as well as matching procedure at many academic libraries around the country. We in Reserves feel that this is a perfectly fine idea, especially since the idea of making the Reserves stacks closed has been encouraged for some time. This said, we would like to take advantage of the planned revision to note what we feel are crucial necessities for any such merger, in order to ensure that our work is uninterrupted while providing thorough customer service."

Etc. etc.

NAG NAG NAG It's hard to be a fly on the wall at Nag Nag Nag with all this condensation; what do you expect when so many fat queens are sweating up the dancefloor? You're either The Talent or you're checking it out. But first you're on the door watching the razor-browed martinet with his Dead Richey makeover and passé combats ordering absolutely everyone to queue. Egalitarian, yes, but people don't come here to feel As One, they're here to fight, flirt and fuck to a soundtrack of as much electro (plus or minus the Clash) as anyone can stand. You see Neil Tennant in the blue corner, Boy George in the red (does he still have that dweeb whose job it is to 'introduce' him to people on the payroll?). You see boys who've gone through the Strokes cloning machine and young men and women working out their Issues through fashion: the girls are in their finest 'you're not leaving the house in that, young lady'; the boys are in costume as every redneck queerbasher who ever riled them at school. The booze is flying; you're secretly drinking from a Coke bottle your flatmate has half-filled with cheap vodka: the closest most students ever get to Tolstoy and Lenin these days. A beautiful black man in a wife-beater vest is giving patter to elegantly wasted wannabes; your flatmate's predilection for dirty dronerock boys hits paydirt when she pulls two at once and drags them back to her boudoir to dance naked but for her paisley g-strings. Perhaps you didn't want to know that. Perhaps the weird, fucked-up energy of the night does these kinds of things to people - at least that's the consensus for everyone in your morning-after post-mortem circle, riding out evil hangovers, waiting for the next night. You're hooked on the cabaret, but unsold on the Voltaire and they've even played Iron Maiden's Run To The Hills into the bargain. Just remind your flatmate to wash those smalls sharpish.

ie my system is crap and I can't explain it.

Work shown: it's the clubbing page of Edgy Style Magazine and frankly, YES they want sexdrugsrock'n'rollNAMES, dahling, NAMES. They also want ISSHOOs like this:

GIRLS AT 21 Are today's young women destiny's children? The generation that were doing their GCSEs when the Spice Girls broke have more complex, concrete aspirations than the misandrous, media-hyped concept of Girl Power. Keenly aware of their opportunities and responsibilities and in many cases the daughters of Third Wave feminists, today's 21-year-olds are exacting, articulate and full of nous about the world they've inherited from older generations.

Furthermore, why should it be otherwise? "We assume we're equal, that feminism has worked for us. We're not part of the generation that had to burn our bras to assert our rights as human beings and I'm aware that people not very much older than us have had more of a struggle to achieve things that people my age almost take for granted. In my life, I feel equal to men," affirms student Amy Gwatkin. "It just pisses me off that some quarters of the media portay us as junk-food scoffing, brand-obsessed, text-messaging morons who listen to manufactured pop. More practical things occupy my mind: I want to be grown-up and self-sufficient without being boring. My friends are the same and I have a lot of respect for them; they're sorted."

That sounds like me at work. I'm sure I've mentioned this work conversation before:

The Boss: [tells me about an email he has from a rather stupid client, accusing us of spamming him because of an auto-forwarding email account he has on our server which gets a lot of spam]

Me: Can I reply to it? I want to say: "This is not our fault. You are a poxy fule; learn how to read email headers."

The Boss: See, this is why I don't let you talk to our clients

eg:

"Many theories of community date back to the late 19th Century, the work of Ferdinand Tonnies is seen as seminal. Tonnies introduced the concept of Gemeinschaft (community) and Geselleschaft (society), the former is based around fellowship, family and custom (i.e. agricultural and extended family groups), whilst the latter is based around individualism, with social relations becoming more contractual and impersonal (Fernback 1999). The movement from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft highlights the process of the industrial revolution, where people began to work for organisations and migrate into cities. For many, Gemeinschaft is seen as an ideal, a sign of a caring society. From this we take the fundamental concept that community is fluid, it can’t be set in stone (Jones 1999)."

Out Da Club?

Some clubs apparently aren't spinning Bone Crusher's hit "Never Scared" (featuring Killer Mike) because the tune has been known to incite violent mosh pits. "This song is a positive anthem [that says] never be scared of anything," clarifies Crusher. Check out the cut's hefty bounce when Crusher performs Tuesday on NBC's Late Night With Conan O'Brien.

I think I get a bit more freedom in my written work voice:

New Project Timetable

This term is 7 weeks long. On the Wednesday of the 7th week you will hand in your completed projects for marking. After that you will not be able to make corrections, additions or any other alterations. Any projects not handed in on that day, for any reason whatsoever, will not be marked and you will instantly lose 40% of your ICT AS Level mark. If you think you will be away that day then hand it in before. No excuses short of death (your own) will be accepted – and if you’re dead you won’t be wanting an AS anyway.

But it's still not quite like when I write for fun, when I try to be as inconsistent as possible, eg:

Manitoba - "Up In Flames"

This sounds like the warm headache and the swirly feeling you get in your stomach just before you vomit.

You've eaten too much pink candyfloss and been on the whirly spinny things at the fair and that's okay because those whirly spinning things could only make a complete pussy throw up but now it's your headache and your swirly feeling and your candyfloss sick on the pavement and you're the pussy and the floor's still spinning and will it ever stop?

"The next-to-last stanza performs work similar to what the previous stanza offered, referring back to images presented earlier in the poem. It begins, “there is nothing that / distracts me”, a notion that harkens back to the trio of images offered in the second stanza that are unable to fulfill their proper duty and offer satisfaction (the cup of hot tea that is cold; the dry cigarette, usually crackling in a warm, moist fashion; the robe, meant to keep its wearer warm, offering no warmth). He then describes music as “only a crossword puzzle”, a telling comparison. Music, in a sense, is a puzzle, a mysterious construct pregnant with possibilities, possibilities that make the latest listen as enriching as the first listen. However, in this state, there is no mystery in music – it is a solvable puzzle, a finite construct. There is no mystery, no suspense, no intrigue. In the narrator’s mind, music is now useless. This is not the first time in this poem where music fails to soothe – in the fourth stanza, the narrator’s loneliness brings to mind the harsh whisper of flutes. Even the thought that ends this stanza and continues into the next stanza – “do you know how it is // when you are the only / passenger” – harkens back to the numerous references to cars and buses and especially the bicycle made earlier in the poem."

-- Tim

Spot on Tim. I wrote five of them yesterday.

Here's a zingy paragraph from my last essay.
'As previously mentioned one of the harsh realities that CIDC faced is that no one national market in Francophone Africa is enough to turn a profit. FEPACI recognised this in its call for both national cinemas but a pan-African strategy. However even if one can ensure distribution for a Senegalese film in other Francophone African nations issues of cultural specificity and in particularly language comes into play. Camp de Thioayre (Sembène, Senegal/Algeria/Tunisia 1988) is the story of the slaughter of the tirailleurs sénégalais in a return camp outside Dakar after the Second World War. A powerful film comparing the treatment of soldiers who fought for the liberation of France and the subjugation of the African colonies - it is necessarily a film which has more power and resonance in Senegal itself - the site of the massacre. Sembène also uses language (as he does in Xala) to highlight the differences between the soldiers and their officers. French - whilst widespread in Francophone Africa - is still restricted to the more educated. Wolof, a dialect of Senegal, is specific to that country. Therefore to reach a wider audience the films would need to be dubbed or subtitled (subtitling restricting films again to the literate classes). These incur additional production expenses to films that are already generally losing money, and can be used as a more than adequate excuse for distributors or exhibitors who do not wish a particular film to be seen. Another financial problem occurred with taxation: the CIDC had no control over individual taxation in its member states, which was often over 50%. This hit exhibitors, forcing them to go for the most commercial films possible - and also often under-reporting ticket sales to make a profit (this would hit both taxation and revenue for the CIDC) .'

"

holy fuck what is wrong with work people, just use your normal voice and not your stupid fake whatever voice it is that you think you have to use to deal with people at work because srsly it makes me go all stab a bitch

voices used by other people at workplace:
- the somewhat bitchy leaving a message 'neutral' voice
- the sickly sweet tee hee hee voice
- creepy lawyer voice

i remember when i tried out the academic voice when i first started grad school and it made me kinda dislike myself so i stopped

other voices:
- jokey dude hehehe underlying current of misogyny
- fake angry yelling comedy voice actually fueled by real anger

i just use my own voice, srsly whatever guys take it or leave it, also i am not in sales

ok better now

i talk like a web 2.0 ninja turtle

and there was this children's cartoon on, and there was this nutty professor whose catchphrase was "INDEED!", in this really funny posh accent.

ah! someone remind me what this is.

I once wrote an essay with a bubbling subtext of not having done enough work for it and rushing it the night before it was due, and got a pretty good grade, with no comment. It seems that I've given up on that kind of thing now, though. Perhaps because my sense of humour is just too stupid, I don't think my multitude of "I Kant do it!" style quips would go down very well. Instead the pomposity of my academic voice has seeped into my normal speech.

I like my academic voice because it's my own voice, same as I use here, love it or hate it.

But my students (philo majors) aren't writing in their own voices this term, and I'm hating that. They try to sound like they're a fancy-pants, but they're not, and that's not the way great philosophers write anyway. Somewhere along the line they must have picked up that the fancier you sound, the better, but that's totally wrong; it just sounds silly.

i probably talk like a web 2.0 ninja turtle except canadian and with cultural studies undertones

Also some MES-isms when drinking.

worst thing ever - answering your own phone as if it was a work phone

I'm starting to worry that my academic voice has become too page-bound--using too many clauses, semi-colons, and em-dashes--I worry that it's beginning to be that sort of writing that it takes a couple of readings just to understand; i.e., I worry that it's just becoming bad writing.

(I like how this thread is like two threads--one about 'voice', and one about voice--and people respond to whatever thread they like. Or both!)

I have the physicists disease of over-use of passive voice. Currently going through a paper removing it. I use it _a lot_. I am generally very anti-semi-colon and pretty anti-long-sentence, which does help to keep things clear and declarative.

A trick I use sometimes is to read my writing aloud, or imagine it read aloud. If it sounds fake or convoluted, I try to make it less so. Generally that means shorter words, clauses, and sentences.

xpost, yes, getting rid of passive voice is an easy way to improve academic/professional writing. If you can't make the subject active, you really need to ask yourself what you're trying to say in that sentence.

If I used my ILX voice in work-related correspondence it would be the dawn of a new era for humankind
the era wherein a tombot is perpetually unemployed

Ha, on the other side of caek's paper, I find that use of passive voice is very helpful in not inciting riots among authors when I have to inform them their manuscript needs hours worth of revisions before it can be reviewed.

I don't really know what my "real" voice is though, or anybody's for that matter, all communications transactions are shaped according entirely to circumstance

real talk^^^

oh shit, I guess not

I think I just put a colleague to sleep with my uninflected droning. I talked awhile then asked him a question (on the phone), and he was all what, what? Sorry, I just zoned out.

I hate to say it, Suzy, but you have now inadvertantly confirmed your status as the board's biggest name-dropper. Or maybe I'm just jealous. ;-)

I love it when people add a little something (like an emoticon or, like, whatever) to a remark so it doesn't seem so snippy or whatever. wink wink

also i am not in sales

What the fuck does that even mean? I'm in sales. I use a "non-sales" voice (meaning: it appears normal but if you listen to my voice backwards it's screeching "BUY IT AND LEAVE THE FUCKING SHOP")

eek
i mean Sales Department of the Place I Work holee shit yall

it's just that fridays at work are pretty much the worst day and i get pretty overwhelmed and o_O

i had three friends who used to work for Budget Carpet Cleaners in knoxville, and their job was to cold-call people

they all had adopted EXACTLY THE SAME VOICE - a nasal, irritating whine - i think it was a defense mechanism against the soullessness of what they were doing, i.e. if they adopted this weird, annoying nasal persona they could pretend it wasn't really them making those calls, doing that job

I am 53. I drive a school bus. My work voice is the voice I use to talk to the kids over the mic. I try to be friendly, firm and fair. I do not hate it.

One of the best parts of my day at work is when I get to announce that "WE'RE CLOSING IN FIFTEEN MINUTES. JUST WANTED TO LET YOU GUYS KNOW."

I hate the way I come across when I write, though.

I write work emails exactly the same as I write to anyone else. I have a disregard for hierarchy, and in my head my work runs a collegiate system.