I've been re-reading some of my first year history essays in hopes of finding areas of actual improvement. I found a great sentence in one of them:

"Likewise, Troeltsch is saddled with a predilection to unnecessary wordiness, unfortunately obscuring his potentially valuable observations."

A predilection to unnecessary wordiness? I'm sorry, what was that? I couldn't hear you over the sounds of the pot screaming, "Black! Black!" at the kettle.