A feature of academic rhetoric is being slightly more specific in your speech than the situation calls for. In other words, explicitly mention at least one of the assumptions your audience was almost certainly making already.
An example is the bolded words in Wikipedia’s definition of the principle of indifference:
The principle of indifference states that in the absence of anyrelevant evidence, agents should distribute their credence (or “degrees of belief”) equally among all the possible outcomes under consideration.
Compare to without the bolded terms:
The principle of indifference states that in the absence of evidence, agents should distribute their credence (or “degrees of belief”) equally among all the possible outcomes.
I find this easier to understand than the original, because it focuses attention on the critical parts. “Any relevant” and “under consideration” help make it more defensible against two of the most obvious attacks. In this definition, you can see the memetic record of the arguments it has survived. Learning how to distinguish between these defensive add-ons and the core content of the definition is an important higher-level reading comprehension skill.
A feature of academic rhetoric is being slightly more specific in your speech than the situation calls for. In other words, explicitly mention at least one of the assumptions your audience was almost certainly making already.
An example is the bolded words in Wikipedia’s definition of the principle of indifference:
Compare to without the bolded terms:
I find this easier to understand than the original, because it focuses attention on the critical parts. “Any relevant” and “under consideration” help make it more defensible against two of the most obvious attacks. In this definition, you can see the memetic record of the arguments it has survived. Learning how to distinguish between these defensive add-ons and the core content of the definition is an important higher-level reading comprehension skill.