Lea Verou, PhDReviewing someone’s (scientific) paper before submission, a part of me wants to mark parts as “too colloquial for academic writing”, and the other part is angrily screaming “WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT? This is actually more fun to read!”.
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On one hand, I think there’s nothing wrong with colloquial, colorful, conversational writing in papers. We need more of it! How much more reach would science have if papers were more interesting and fun to read?
But they will have to deal with reviewers who are pattern matching on dull, opaque Academese. If a paper doesn’t look like other papers and read like other papers, it’s more likely to fail peer review. Reviewers are looking for evidence that authors are in-group, so they can relax.
This phenomenon was described really well in the thought-provoking piece “The rise and fall of peer review”, by Adam Mastroianni https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-review
One could argue that Academese affords better precision, but not every part of a paper needs precision.
One could argue that scientists are rightly suspicious of rhetorical tricks. They don't want clever wording to distract from weakness in the arguments.
Yet, opaque Academese appears to mask the issues even more, given what small % of major flaws are actually caught in peer review!
Meanwhile, the opaque language is likely one of the major reasons that most papers are barely even read by anyone other than their authors and reviewers https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/half-academic-studies-are-never-read-more-three-people-180950222/
So, if I warn them about their “too colloquial for academic writing” language, I'd have contributed to the problem. If I don’t, their paper is more likely to be rejected. What a conundrum!
André Scar 
@leaverou as I see it, you should warn them about it, and the decision is up to them to take a stand. Show them your thoughts so they can make an informed decision