---
name: jfe-writing-style
description: Use when the prose of a Journal of Financial Economics (JFE) manuscript needs to reach the journal's register — precise, evidence-forward, and free of hedging or overclaiming. Polishes language and structure; it does not change the empirics or the contribution.
---

# Writing Style (jfe-writing-style)

## When to trigger

- The introduction hedges or buries the contribution
- Claims outrun the evidence ("proves," "definitively shows")
- Sentences are long, passive, and vague about who did what
- The paper reads like a lab notebook rather than an argument
- A referee might say "I cannot tell what the contribution is"

## The JFE register

JFE prose is precise, restrained, and evidence-forward. Because JFE papers are technical and long, clarity is what keeps a referee on your side: every claim is calibrated to the evidence, magnitudes are stated, and the contribution is unmissable in the first page. Overclaiming is punished harder than modest framing. The famous JFE papers — **Jensen & Meckling (1976)** and **Fama & French (1993)** — are remembered partly because their central idea is stated plainly and early; write to that standard.

Two hard format facts to write toward (verify on jfinec.com): the **abstract must be 100 words or fewer**, so it has to carry the question, design, headline result, and significance with zero padding; and the manuscript is **double-spaced, 12-pt+, author-date references**, which rewards short, declarative sentences over dense clauses.

## The introduction (the highest-leverage page)

A JFE-style introduction usually does, in order:

1. **The question** and why it matters — in the first paragraph.
2. **What you do** — the setting, design, and data, concretely.
3. **What you find** — the headline result with direction and magnitude.
4. **Why it is credible** — one or two sentences on identification/inference.
5. **The contribution** — explicit, relative to the closest work.
6. A short roadmap (optional, brief).

Lead with results, not with a literature tour.

## Sentence-level discipline

- Calibrate verbs to evidence: "is consistent with," "suggests," "we estimate that" — reserve "shows" for what the data actually shows; avoid "proves."
- State magnitudes in interpretable units ("a one-SD increase in X raises Y by Z%"), not just significance.
- Prefer active voice and concrete subjects ("we instrument X with...") over passive fog.
- Cut throat-clearing ("It is important to note that...") and filler intensifiers.
- Define each acronym once; do not let jargon stack.

## Structure discipline

- Each section has a job; say its result in the first sentence.
- Topic sentences should let a referee skim the paper and still get the argument.
- Keep the methods reproducible-in-prose: a reader should know what you ran.

## Checklist

- [ ] The contribution is explicit on the first page
- [ ] Introduction leads with question -> what -> finding -> credibility -> contribution
- [ ] Verbs are calibrated to evidence; no "proves"/overclaiming
- [ ] Headline magnitudes stated in interpretable units
- [ ] Active voice and concrete subjects predominate
- [ ] Acronyms defined once; jargon controlled
- [ ] Abstract is <= 100 words and result-forward
- [ ] References are author-date (name-year), woven into the argument
- [ ] Section topic sentences carry the argument when skimmed

## Anti-patterns

- An introduction that spends two pages on prior literature before stating the result
- "Our results prove that..." — JFE referees recoil at overclaiming
- Reporting significance with no economic magnitude
- Passive, agentless sentences that hide what was actually done
- A contribution paragraph so hedged the reader cannot tell what is new
- Decorative jargon that adds length without precision

## Output format

```
【Intro order】question/what/finding/credibility/contribution present? yes/no
【Overclaim scan】flagged verbs/sentences: [...]
【Magnitudes stated】yes/no
【Voice】active-dominant? yes/no
【Contribution visible on p.1】yes/no
【Next】jfe-submission
```