Agent Skills
› brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills
› restud-writing-style
restud-writing-style
GitHub用于润色《经济研究评论》(REStud) 稿件的引言、摘要及整体行文风格。旨在提升写作的清晰度和优雅感，确保贡献突出且符合期刊严谨简洁的要求，不改变研究结果或设计。
Trigger Scenarios
引言冗长掩盖贡献
摘要侧重动机而非结果
行文啰嗦导致重点不清
论文读起来像工作论文而非正式发表文章
审稿人反馈无法识别核心贡献
Install
npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill restud-writing-style -g -y
SKILL.md
Frontmatter
{
"name": "restud-writing-style",
"description": "Use when polishing the prose of a The Review of Economic Studies (REStud) manuscript — introduction, abstract, and overall economy of exposition — so the original contribution reads clearly and elegantly. Polishes writing; does not change results, design, or model."
}
REStud Writing Style (restud-writing-style)
When to trigger
- The introduction runs long and buries the contribution
- The abstract reads as motivation rather than result
- Prose is wordy; the reader cannot find the one clean point quickly
- The paper is technically done but reads as a working paper, not a REStud article
- A seminar comment was "I couldn't tell what the contribution was"
REStud house style
REStud prizes a contribution "presented rigorously and economically," and it must read well to both a theorist and an applied economist — the journal's defining balance since its 1933 founding. The writing standard follows:
- Clarity over flourish. Plain, precise English. The reader should never reread a sentence to parse it.
- Economy. Say it once, well. Cut sentences that restate. The elegance the journal rewards is partly a property of the prose — and the manuscript must fit the ~45-page cap, so the main text carries intuition while full proofs and bulky robustness go to the online appendix.
- Result-forward. The reader learns what the paper finds early — in the abstract, and again in the first page — not after five pages of motivation.
- References: Harvard author-date (REStud house style), e.g., "(Card and Krueger, 1994)" and "Card and Krueger (1994) show ..." — never numbered references. Verify the current style guide on the journal's official page before final formatting.
The introduction
A REStud introduction is not the AER five-paragraph formula by decree, but the same logic serves it well:
- The hook and the question — the broad economic question, stated so a non-specialist cares.
- What we do — the contribution: the new model, design, or fact, in one or two sentences.
- How — the method/design and the key idea that makes it work ("why now / why not before").
- What we find — the headline result, with magnitude.
- Why it matters / related work — the contribution located against the closest papers (hand off to
restud-literature-positioningif this is thin).
Keep it tight. The editor and referees form a judgment in the first two pages.
The abstract
- One short paragraph. State the question, the contribution (model/design/fact), the headline finding, and why it matters — in that order.
- Result, not motivation. "We document/show/prove X" — not "X is an important and understudied question."
- Keep it to one tight paragraph; verify the current abstract limit on the journal's official author guidelines (the ~45-page manuscript cap is stated; the abstract limit is editor discretion) before submission.
Prose discipline
- Active voice for what you did ("we show", "we estimate"); reserve passive for processes.
- One idea per paragraph; topic sentence first.
- Define each term once; do not toggle synonyms for the same object.
- Cut hedging stacks ("it may perhaps possibly suggest"); state the claim and its caveat once.
- Equations are part of the sentence — punctuate them and gloss every symbol in words on first use.
Checklist
- Contribution stated by the end of page 1
- Abstract leads with result, not motivation, and is within the current limit
- Introduction has hook / what / how / find / matters, tightly
- No paragraph restates a prior paragraph
- Author-date references used consistently
- Every symbol glossed in words on first use
- A non-specialist could state the contribution after two pages
Anti-patterns
- An introduction that spends 3+ pages on motivation before naming the contribution
- An abstract that sells importance instead of stating the result
- Wordiness and redundancy that obscure an otherwise clean point
- Numbered/footnoted reference style when the journal uses author-date
- Synonym-toggling for the same variable, forcing the reader to re-map notation
- Treating writing polish as a step before the result and design are stable
Output format
【CONTRIBUTION ON PAGE 1?】yes / no
【ABSTRACT】result-forward / motivation-heavy — word count vs current limit
【INTRO STRUCTURE】hook / what / how / find / matters — present?
【REFERENCE STYLE】author-date confirmed
【REDUNDANCY CUT】<lines/paragraphs removed>
【NEXT SKILL】restud-replication-package | restud-submission
Version History
- 1839142 Current 2026-07-05 14:21
