The Bad Prose Epidemic

London. Michaelmas term lately over and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall, implacable November weather. These are the opening lines of Charles Dickens' Bleak House, which 85 English majors were asked to read as part of a study. Researchers gave the students the first seven paragraphs of Bleak House with 20 minutes to read and translate the

passage into plain English. Of the 85 students, researchers found that 58% understood so little of the introduction to Bleak House that they would not be able to read the novel on their own. 38% could interpret only about half of the literal prose in the passage, leaving only 5% of students who were deemed to have proficiently understood

it. Admittedly, the opening to Bleak House is difficult with lots of antiquated terms we don't use anymore. Still, the study supports the anecdotes of many teachers and professors that students, even English students, are struggling to read. Not just getting through a long book, but reading on a sentence-by-sentence level. In other news, the latest online book

controversy has been about bad writing. Could this be the most controversial book of 2026? [music] Terms of writing style and storytelling, it's giving someone's first attempt at writing something ever. Everything is over described. A lot of the words don't [music] fit the story. The feeling is personified in my stomach. I have to

yield to a conglomerate of pedestrians. There is a long and proud tradition of clipping a sentence out of context to make fun of a book with. From Twilight's iconic khaki skirt line to so much of The Da Vinci Code, a lot of online book criticism does boil down to singling out particularly egregious