Thanks for your comments Jeremy and great to know academic writers are writing so different readers can access their ideas. I think technical terms are a useful shortcut if one subject matter expert is writing or talking to another. But if some readers don’t understand them, as you say, you should simply explain what the idea means.

Fabulous, Dinah.

‘My study is about why and how old women learned to make their own clothes when they were girls and what it meant to them.

I talked to women, read old books and papers, and went to schools.

Being old and living a long time ago did not always make you good at making clothes.

Lots of girls saw their mothers make clothes at home. Sometimes the clothes were great and sometimes they were not so good.

Sometimes girls who made clothes at school felt they were stupid. Schools did not pay much attention to girls who learned to make clothes. But girls who wanted to be teachers had to be able to make clothes, which was confusing.

When they left school they could make themselves anything they liked. When they had children, they made clothes for them too. As children grow up, they stop wanting to wear clothes their mothers make.

Women keep the things their mothers used to make clothes, but the clothes are thrown out.

I found out that making your own clothes makes you think about who you are and who you want to be. It changes how you see yourself and gives you a way to change how other people see you.’