I was really excited when I first stumbled onto this book. As you can imagine, it's perfectly in line with my interests. But, when I tried to read it, the prose just killed me. I think there's good ideas in there, but I can't bear to wade through the heavy-handed academic style get there.

I understand writing for a certain venue requires certain stylistic choices, but I really hope you guys can tone it down a bit. Here's a sentence plucked randomly from the linked chapter:

> "Generative grammars were originally devised as a method to formally describe sets of linguistic phrases."

Let me just go through that:

"originally devised" -> "Devise" implies originality.

"as a method" -> This adds nothing to the sentence.

"formally" -> I suppose this matters in some cases but given that the chapter isn't a precise introduction to generative grammars, whether or not it's a formal system doesn't seem very critical to me.

"sets of" -> This adds nothing.

"linquistic" -> What other kinds of phrases are there?

I would edit this sentence down to:

> Generative grammars were invented to describe written text.

I understand academic writing isn't designed to be read for pleasure, but we're all human. If you make the prose more approachable, you'll reach a much wider audience. You have some fantastic material in here, great algorithms, diagrams, and structure. I just feel that the writing style gets in the way of it.

If I could suggest anything, it's that the authors go through the prose and for every phrase ask themselves: "Does this add information? Is there a way to convey the same concept in plainer language?"