Talking Reading listening

Writing 7

6. REFERENCES

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Basil Blackwell (1985) Guide for Authors. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985.

Bower et al. (1994) “Protocol, Etiquette, and Responsibilities of Reviewers in Fi-nance”

, Financial Practice and Education, Fall/Winter 199418-24.

Davis, John (1940) “The the Argument of an Appeal“ from American Bar Association

Journal, December 1940, 26: 895-899.

Fowler, H. (1965) A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Second Edition. New York:

Oxford University Press, 1965.

Halmos, Paul (1970) “How to Write Mathematics” L’Enseignement Mathematique.

May/June 1970. 16, 2: 123-152.

Harman Eleanor (1975), “Hints on Poofreading” Scholarly Publishing, pp. 151-157

(January 1975).

McCloskey, Donald (1985) “Economical Writing” Economic Inquiry. April 1985. 24,

2: 187-222.

“The University of Chicago. Starting Research Early” Harry Roberts and Roman Weil.

(August 14, 1970)

Sonnenschein, Hugo & Dorothy Hodges (1980) “Manual for Econometrica Authors”,

Econometrica 48: 1073-1081 (July 1980).

Stigler, George (1977) “The Conference Handbook“, Journal of Political Economy,

85: 441-443.

Strunk, William & E. White (1959) The Elements of Style. New York: Macmillan,

1959.

Tufte, Edward (1983) The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Chesire, Conn.:

Graphics Press, 1983.

Weiner, E. (1984) The Oxford Guide to the English Language. Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity

Press, 1984.

14

Eric Rasmusen, Indiana University School of Business, Rm. 456,

1309 E 10th Street, Bloomington, Indiana, 47405-1701. Office: (812) 855-9219. Fax: 812-855-3354.

Email: Erasmuse@Indiana.edu. Web: http://ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu/erasmuse. Revised, June 26, 1996

2

2. WRITING

1

1. To overcome writer’s block, put together an outline of the points you want to make,

in any order. Then, order them. Start writing without worrying about style, and later

revise heavily or start over. Starting twice today is better than waiting three months

and starting once. It is better, a fortiori, than waiting forever.

2. Xerox your paper before you give it to anyone, or, better still, retain two copies on

disk, in separate locations (for fear of fire).

3. Number each page of text, so the reader can comment on particular pages. Num-ber

each equation in drafts on which you want comments. If you have appropriate

software, label each line.

4. The title page should always have (1) the date, (2) your address, (3) your phone

number, and (4) your e-mail address. You might as well put your fax number down

too.

5. A paper over five pages long should include a half-page summary of its main point.

Depending on your audience, call this an abstract or an executive summary. In gen-eral,

write your paper so that someone can decide within three minutes whether he

wants to read it.Usually, you do not get the benefit of the doubt.

6. It is often useful to divide the paper into short sections using boldface headings,

especially if you have trouble making the structure clear to the reader.

7. Technical papers should present their results as Propositions (theinteresting results,

stated in words), Corollaries (subsidiary ideas or special cases which flow directly

from the propositions), Lemmas (points which need to be proved to prove the propo-sitions,

but usually have no instrinsic interest) and Proofs. Lemmas and Proofs can be

purely mathematical, but Propositions and Corollaries should be intelligible to some-one

who flips directly to them when he picks up the paper.That means they must be

intelligible to someone who does not know the paper’s notation. A reader must be

able to decide whether the paper is worth reading just by reading the propositions.

8. It is best to present the model in as short a space as possible, before pausing to

explain the assumptions. That way, the experienced reader can grasp what the model

is all about, and all readers can flip back and find the notation all in one place. It

is okay, and even desirable, however, to separate the model and the analysis of the

equilibrium.

9. Do not introduce new facts in your concluding section. Instead, (a) summarize your

findings, or (b) suggest future research.

1

Eric Rasmusen, Indiana University School of Business, Rm. 456, 1309 E 10th Street, Bloomington,

Indiana, 47405-1701. Office: (812) 855-9219. Fax: 812-855-3354. Email: Erasmuse@Indiana.edu. Web:

http://ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu/erasmuse. Revised July 2, 1996.

Writing 3

10. Even a working paper should have a list of references, and these should be at the very

end, after the appendices and diagrams, so the reader can flip to them easily. Law

reviews do not publish lists of references, but you should have one anyway for the

working paper version, including separately a list of cases and statutes cited, with, if

you want to be especially helpful, a phrase of explanation. Example: United States

v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968) (upholding the conviction of a draft card burner).

11. Be content if your paper has one contribution to make. That is one more than most

published articles. If you include too many points, the reader may not be able to

locate the best one. Beware of listing too many results as propositions. Three propo-sitions

to an article is plenty; a paper with ten propositions clearly has nothing to

say. But don’t follow the example of the author who had eight propositions and eight

theorems so he could avoid double-digit numbering!

12. Please don’t shoot the reader; he’s doing his best. The reader, like the customer,

is always right. That is not to be taken literally, but it is true in the sense that if

the reader has trouble, the writer should pay attention to why, and not immediately

blame the reader. Copyeditors are a different matter. Especially at law reviews and

scholarly journals, they are often pedantic young college grads who rely on rules and

ignore clarity. (In my experience, book copyeditors are much better.)

13. In dealing with journals, remember that the editor, and even the referee, is usually

much smarter than you are. They often get things wrong, but that is because they

are in a hurry or feel obligated to give objective reasons for rejecting a paper when

the real reason is that it is trivial or boring. If a referee has given some thought to

the paper, he is probably correct when he suggests changes. Suggesting changes is a

sign that he has indeed given some thought to it; referees who have just skimmed the

paper usually do not suggest any changes.

14. Reading your paper out loud is the best way to catch awkward phrasing and typos.

Have someone else proofread the final version for you.

15. It is very useful to set aside a paper for a week or a month before going back to revise

it.

16. Serious papers require many drafts (five to twenty-five). Coursework does not, but

you should be aware of the difference from professional academic standards.

17. Look at published papers to get a guide for the accepted formats for academic papers.

18. Scholarly references to ideas can be in parenthetic form, like (Rasmusen [1988]),

instead of in footnotes.

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Footnotes are suitable for tangential comments, citation

of specific facts (e.g., the ratio of inventories to final sales is 2.6), or explanations

2

Like this: Rasmusen, Eric (1988) “Stock Banks and Mutual Banks.” Journal of Law and Economics.

October 1988, 31: 395-422.

Word Count: 1178