I think that all kinds of jargon and style canons (like using latex for academic papers or the special unwritten rules for formatting movie scripts) are primarily an in-group/out-group mechanism.
By communicating in the “expected” way, you are communicating that you are part of the in group.
As a side note, writing for a broad audience is harder than writing stylistically. You have to not only understand all the concepts involved, but you have to be able to accurately convey those concepts in simple sentences without the use of jargon. I believe this is a rare skill.
In academia, for the last few years there has been a push for Plain Language Summaries (PLS) as an accompaniment to traditional abstracts. This is a step in the right direction IMO, because many people don’t even bother reading the paper, or give up quickly, if it’s overly obtuse.
Law could take a lesson from this.
By communicating in the “expected” way, you are communicating that you are part of the in group.
As a side note, writing for a broad audience is harder than writing stylistically. You have to not only understand all the concepts involved, but you have to be able to accurately convey those concepts in simple sentences without the use of jargon. I believe this is a rare skill.
In academia, for the last few years there has been a push for Plain Language Summaries (PLS) as an accompaniment to traditional abstracts. This is a step in the right direction IMO, because many people don’t even bother reading the paper, or give up quickly, if it’s overly obtuse.
Law could take a lesson from this.