Why conform? A response to Will M.’s point of view

In a previous post, titled “Why conform? A not-so-short discourse on ‘proper’ manuscript-writing,” I examined the advantages and disadvantages of enforcing compositional rules in academic writing. This post is a follow-up.


The question is: are academic writers “prevented from making certain choices about the medium for their expression for good reasons”? What constitutes a good reason?

In terms of the technical justifications for style rules, the reasons are very good—in the academic world, keeping formatting rigidly uniform is the key to determining content length (as I’ve said). Past that, there’s really only one other good reason for rules like MLA and APA, and it lies in the prevention of plagiarism. When citing sources becomes a “big deal” (i.e., college), having the skill to properly reference external information saves you (and your instructor) lots of academic trouble.

But what if a certain assignment doesn’t have a set content length? And what if that assignment doesn’t include outside sources?

Will M., in the short video above, claims that society is to blame (or credit) for academic uniformity. How, though, is beyond the scope of the video.

“Paper specificities are based off societal norms.”

I disagree, and think it’s the inverse: society is more likely to follow from the restrictive efforts of language associations when it concerns controlling the form of academic content. Students, if more heavily restricted in their ways of expressing ideas, are more likely to keep up habits they developed in school around these rules, and begin to apply them to daily life as adults.

“When writing a serious paper, a writer should not see what the writer is feeling by visuals; instead, the writer should paint a picture with words.”

As a creative writer, I agree, but disagree while taking the position of a more visually-inclined student. Sometimes students can more effectively use visuals to do what natural-born writers and speakers do. By discouraging alternative methods of expression, the restriction can hurt these students’ academic performances.

“Society has set these rules. By not following them, one can become outcast and less accepted.”

Definitely—and it happens. I’m more inclined to believe that this is a problem in contemporary society. American culture is rapidly changing, moving to accept more liberal ideals—but still, the classroom is where social rejection most frequently occurs, and more often than not toward students who can’t express themselves in the ways they feel are most natural.