Too much creative writing
I recently sent a reduced-size paper about combining UCD and XP to a HCI/systems development conference. The first draft I sent out was created in a copy-paste manner from a larger paper, as an approaching deadline of the conference made it impossible for me to rewrite the paper into something that was actually fluent. So I wasn’t surprised that the paper got rejected by the conference. I received a very good and constructive criticism back from the person who was in charge of the HCI chair – mostly on the structure of the paper.
Although the criticism was very good, I was stunned by one point of critique:
“Also, we suggest to check the English language which is now a bit too creative/poetic at certain points.”
Come on! When did it become a bad thing to write with a little enthusiasm? I want to make whoever is reading what I write to be inspired more than bored. Why write something if it isn’t to let the reader think or have the same idea as you did? Let me asure you… my writing in the paper is far from poetic – but might be amusing in some places. 