A couple months back, I saw this headline: “Group calls for focus on writing.”

The National Commission on Writing in America’s Schools and Colleges had just issued a report urging more writing at every educational level.

David Shulenburger, Kansas University provost and executive vice chancellor, and former Chancellor Gene Budig are on the commission.

The story was parked on Page 3, Section B, of the local paper.

It’s not front-page news that we write lousy.

Earlier this year, I chaired the judging of a national competition among university magazines. Browsing through them, we saw our poor mother tongue tormented badly. Some of the prose we read produced that sensation you get when you eat fudge brownies after drinking a bunch of merlot.

A California magazine editor started a note to his readers this way: “A common thread running through two of the three feature stories in this issue is the exceptional efforts of two individuals one a member of our faculty and the other an alumnus of our class of 1974 to speed the delivery of legal relief to thousands of people who have suffered losses.”

What’s not to like?

All the words. All the numbers. The fact that the verb “is” has to carry 51 other words on its narrow shoulders. The dead metaphor “common thread.”

Otherwise, the sentence is fine.

Then there was the following, written by a dean of business in the state of Washington.

“It is tempting, at times, for an institution to rely on its good reputation, but in the area of business, a world that, by its fiercely competitive nature, changes and evolves more quickly than perhaps any other sphere of human endeavor, a business school that does not keep abreast of new ideas, new strategies and new technologies is destined to suffer.”

This sentence suffers from a combination of syntactic complexity, timidity and bloat that characterizes academic writing gone moldy.

Here’s what the writer’s trying to say: “It’d be nice if our business school could ride on its reputation. But it can’t. Business is just too competitive and too dynamic.”

Even good university magazines publish foolishness. A story in a Pennsylvania magazine opened with this sentence: “In the observance of ingenuity there is subtle elegance.”

The important-sounding words combined with the absence of meaning made me feel … what’s the word … greasy?

Unfortunately, bad prose also grows in Kansas, with the mindless energy of honeysuckle in springtime. The Web site of one prominent eastern Kansas university says that it’s the only Board of Regents school to hold membership “in the prestigious Association of American Universities … a select group of 58 public and private research universities that represents excellence in graduate and professional education and the highest achievements in research internationally.”

In other words, this university belongs to an association that is prestigious and select, that represents excellence and high achievement.

Does saying the same thing four ways make it four times more credible?

Nope. Not at all. Never.

The idea that educators at every level should pay more attention to writing is excellent. I’m glad Shulenburger and Budig are part of this task.

In addition, every writer might pay more attention to his or her thinking.

That seems to be where the trouble begins.