Last October, Amazon introduced a new feature: a list of bestselling authors, aggregating across all books an author has written. Here is the list of the top 100 authors.
For an economist, perusing the list is a humbling experience. As far as I can tell, not a single member of our profession made the list. I wonder whether Galbriath might have made it in his day, as he had written a large number of books accessible to general audiences. But these days, not a single one of us has wide enough readership to make it onto the list. The next time you are tempted to lament the sad state of the public discussion of economic policy, remember that we economists are probably not doing enough to educate the public.
We just don't write things that people want to read.If you want to know what economists come closest, you can look at this list of bestselling authors in business and investment, a category that includes economics. Several of us make this less selective list.
- Give examples: for every sentence that you write about an abstract concept or principle, follow up with the words "For example . . ." . . .
- . . . Stylish writers [her way to say good academic writers] employ similes, metaphors, analogies, and other figurative language to capture their reader's attention, and their understanding, appeal to their physical senses, and generate new ideas. If figurative language doesn't come naturally to you, try the following steps:
- . . . Choose a bland, abstract sentence from your book, thesis, or article. (Example: "Speech errors occur frequently in human conversation, but the many different varieties of errors are not yet been adequately analized and categorized by scholars.")
- Identify the subjet of the sentence and come up with some concrete similes. ("Speech errors are like: sprouting weeds, lost children, swarming insects.")
- Choose one of those similes and expand it into an analogy. ("If speech errors are like warming insects, then the people who study them are like entomologists, and the act of studing them is like catching and classfying insects.")
- Get playful with the analogy: push its limits, explore its shadow side. ("If speech errors are like swarming insects, studying them is like intentionally walking into a cloud of mosquitoes. If linguists are like entomologists, classifying speech errors is like dipping butterflies in formaldehyde and pinning them to a board").
1) The paper should be read and commented on by colleagues before submitting.
2) Ideally, the paper has been presented in seminars and conferences.
3) Treat any comment in a seminar or conference like a referee comment, address these comments, and when appropriate email the commenter to explain how you addressed the suggestions.
4) In your paper make it very clear what the new economic insight is and why it is important.
5) Theory papers should:
i) explain why the model is useful;
ii) make clear where the paper deviates from past models;
iii) not merely fit a known fact but offer new testable implications; and
iv) include a discussion of both the strengths and the weaknesses of the approach.
6) Empirical papers should:
i) explain why the finding is important;
ii) clearly differentiate the paper’s approach from past approaches;
iii) not be shackled by past methods (we do X because another did X in the past);
iv) present a clear economic justification for the empirical examination;
v) convince the reader that there has been minimal data mining;
vi) check for robustness and influential observations; and
vii) use state-of-the-art econometrics.
Over my six years as editor at the Journal of Finance (2006-2012), I handled approximately 7,500 submissions. Even at the point of my “retirement” on July 1, 2012, I still had more than 500 manuscripts under my control. This paper gives some of the historical background as well as offering some insights about editing, submission strategies for authors, as well as advice for referees.
Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard (Zinsser, 2006)That is from the paper "Reflections on the Craft of Clear Writing" by Roy Suddaby, Editor of the Academy of Management Review (July 2012).
. . . [C]lear writing is all about rewriting. As Zinsser explains, “Rewriting is the essence of writing well; it's where the game is won or lost. That idea is hard to accept. We all have emotional equity in our first draft; we can't believe it wasn't born perfect” (2006: 83). The process of clear writing helps us sharpen our ideas. It can also illuminate flaws in our logic or approach. When we drill down to the core of our ideas, we may discover a diamond in the rough or a lump of coal. If it is coal, don't try to pass it off as a diamond. Start fresh. Part with your words; it is part of the process. As Zinsser points out, “You won't write well until you understand that writing is an evolving process, not a finished product” (2006: 84).
My concern is that after my departure something remains of me, not papers, not final philosophical declarations, but love. I hope that that will remain and will not be too much affected by the manner of my final departure, which I would like to be peaceful, like a coma, without a death struggle, leaving bad memories behind. Whatever happens now, our small family can live forever -- Grazina, me, and our love. That is what I would like to happen, not intellectual survival but the survival of love.
But what is more important--to be understood by outsiders or to be regarded as a "deep thinker"? Writing in a simple style that a general reader can understand is not the same as being superficial. I urge all writers who want to inform their fellow citizens to stay away from philosophy, or at least to stop being intimidated and influenced by obfuscators such as Derrida and, instead, to read Shopenhauer or Kant's popular essays (p. 180).Adendum
The motivation for this paper is an argument proposed by Salant (1969), who claimed that on many occasions he found the writing of his colleagues “nearly incomprehensible.” Too often, he said, it is difficult to understand the main message that an economist is trying to communicate. He then argued that a “simple way of avoiding clumsiness is to prefer the short word to the long one and to avoid the unfamiliar word if a familiar one can be found that is equally correct, specific, and concrete” (p. 556). We call this “the Salant hypothesis,” and use ANOVA to test this hypothesis by comparing the average length of words used by Nobel laureates in their acceptance speeches. We find that Literature laureates do indeed tend to use shorter words than laureates in other disciplines, and the difference is statistically significant. These results confirm Salant’s idea that words are a scarce resource and should be used efficiently. This includes using short words instead of long ones whenever possible. In short, good writing is also “economical writing.”
As far as we economists are concerned, however, when we want to be understood by people who are not specialists, the gain in convenience must be very great to justify our using technical words and we should take a good deal of trouble to avoid them. We should accept that burthen rather than place upon the reader the burden of understanding the unfamiliar.Source
