Let’s begin with a parable from Inside Higher Ed:

• An Etiquette Lesson by Alaina G. Levine

(Read the comments, too — there’s an entertaining subthread about women sexualizing men:

“When women objectify men, its a cool, chic, and enpowered act. When men do it, its sexist.”

Let’s not let a double standard get in the way of my rant, okay?)

I agree with Ms. Levine’s point, and I’m a bit surprised that I do. See, I find academia’s tolerant attitude towards eccentricity — particularly in one’s wardrobe — compelling. I spent a little while working in the private sector, and it galled me to be held to a dress code (“no jeans, no sneakers” — okay, if you want BDU trousers and garrison boots, I’m happy to oblige) when management wouldn’t let me anywhere near clients.

On the other hand, I’m deeply grateful that management wouldn’t let clients anywhere near me.

Lately, though, I’ve swapped my CADPAT for blue jeans and my Skinny Puppy t-shirts for polos. Why? Because no matter what we’d all like to believe, first impressions count for a lot — and visiting professors are more likely to take me seriously if I come across as an adult than if I come across as an angst-ridden teenager. If nothing else, they’re less likely to be distracted from my brilliant research by my new less-outlandish wardrobe. The same thing applies to table manners — I’d rather the distinguished guest lecturer across the table focus on what I’m telling her about my earth-shattering hypotheses than on my atrocious fork-handling.

The same thing applies to writing. When I submit a paper, I want the reviewers to look at the content — not get stuck on hundred-clause run-on sentences. I want to dazzle them with my screenshots, not baffle them with my atrocious grammar. I want them to re-read my proofs because they’re breathtakingly elegant, not because they can’t figure out what the hell I’m trying to say.

Further, I want to stack the deck in my favour as much as possible. Content counts above all else — but once I have worthy content, I want the packaging — the paper, the writing, the typesetting — to look as good as possible. This is where real typesetting systems like LaTeX and AMS-TeX really shine: they produce damn fine output left to their own devices, and they give you extremely fine control over things like spacing and hyphenation when their typesetting heuristics fail to produce exactly the right thing. I can spend an hour tweaking the spacing of symbols in a LaTeX equation and end up with a beautiful piece of mathematical typography. The mere thought of spending an hour in Microsoft Equation Editor makes me want to break my fingers.

As far as I’m concerned, Graham, Knuth, and Patashnik’s Concrete Mathematics is the pinnacle of mathematical typography. It was typeset using TeX (of course) and the Euler mathematical typeface. It’s a damn fine book in its own right, but the equations are works of art.

Ah, but there’s a catch.

When issues of proper appearance come up, most people argue from an absolute position. It’s always best to use your utensils from the outside in. It’s always best to typeset your articles in some variant of TeX. It’s always best to wear a nice suit, shirt, and tie.

Nope.

See, the form of whatever you present is itself a piece of content — it projects an image, an impression. You may project that image very effectively, in its most sophisticated and refined form, but if your audience wants to see something else, you are foxtrot uniform. Submit a meticulously typeset article on cryptographic methods to Wired magazine and the editor will laugh at you. Walk into a blue-collar sports bar in khakis and a tight salmon-coloured babydoll tee-shirt and you’ll get the shit beat out of you. It’s not just projecting an image — it’s projecting the right image.

(This is, of course, where the personal-security thread comes in. How people see you — which is directly related to what sort of image you project — largely dictates how much shit they’ll give you. If you look like a cheeseburger, they’ll try to eat you for lunch. If you look out of place, you attract attention — and you identify yourself as an intruder to anyone with a territoriality complex. If you blend in at first glance — and look inedible at a second glance — well, there are probably easier targets out there.)

Pay attention to how you say things as well as what you say.