and professional reading

Some writing is not what we’d expect.

None of our consultants is a professional historian, though (perhaps you’ve noticed) we have an interest in the field.  In fact, our navigator receives a quarterly journal of maritime history, a peer-reviewed publication for historians.  The articles tend to be more limited in focus and much more detailed than popular expositions, as one would expect, though almost always entirely intelligible to an outsider.

However, he brought a sentence from a recent article to the attention of our writer, wondering whether it was as problematic as he thought.  Here it is:

Thereafter the relations with Baltic states polarized to curtail British trade which critically deepened Danish/Russian ties and, through French proximity, posed the possibility of a post-Trafalgar grand fleet of Danish and Russian warships at Copenhagen.

Leaving aside the historical context, consider this solely as an English sentence.  What is the subject of the verb “posed?”  We agreed that the only grammatical possibility is “relations,” which makes no logical sense.  Other possibilities are tucked away in prepositional phrases, where (grammatically speaking) they can’t get out.  There are also difficulties with the whole chain of thought.  So we brought it to the attention of some English teachers.

They were horrified.  They found difficulties and syntactical problems everywhere.  They agreed that, should a High School student present this in an essay, he or she would be told to discard it as unsalvageable, and start over.

We would think, naively, that historians are all professional writers.  That is, in addition to specialized skills and insights to discover and interpret the various forms of evidence they use, they need to be able towrite.  Their products are almost entirely writings.  Articles and books are their professional output, and thus if not always models of English prose, should be at least competent examples. Unfortunately, this is not true.  The offending sentence above is not an isolated instance.  How is this so?

In this case, probably because the sentence is rehearsing material already well-known to the readers.  Maritime historians are almost certainly familiar with the politics of the Baltic Sea during the Napoleonic Wars; it’s a high-profile conflict and contains many themes of interest, well-studied and with an extensive literature.  So a sentence of questionable grammar can be glossed over, much as if the author had provided a telegraphic set of keywords just to remind the readers: “British relations with Baltic countries–Sweden vs. Russian and Denmark–French armies on the borders–combined fleet at Copenhagen?”  Taken this way, poor writing does no real damage.

Unfortunately, there is the danger that it doesn’t stop here.  A habit of fuzzy or sloppy language makes it difficult to express ideas that are clear and logical, as we’ve noted.  An author who gets too used to this kind of prose will employ it not only for the background of his article, but for the important points he or she wants to make, and the tool is not suitable.  The real danger, though, is that the audience will not notice.