fcr-writing-style

Writing Style (fcr-writing-style)

An FCR paper must be readable by an agronomist or crop scientist outside your exact crop and region, written in grammatically sound English, and disciplined to FCR's structure: a focused introduction, complete methods, concise results that address the objectives, and a discussion that interprets rather than restates results. This skill is about clarity and format — not about generating claims.

When to trigger

• Drafting the introduction, results, or discussion, or doing a final polish
• Writing the abstract (≤ 400 words) and the highlights (3–5 bullets)
• Tightening a verbose results or discussion section
• Aligning citations and units to the Elsevier/FCR style before submission

Structure & section discipline

1. Introduction. Brief, unbiased, up-to-date review that flows to clear objectives or hypotheses of general relevance (see fcr-literature-positioning).
2. Materials & Methods. Complete enough to reproduce: crop/cultivar, sites/seasons, soil, weather, management, design, and statistics (see fcr-reporting-and-data-policy).
3. Results. Concise; report what answers the objectives, with effect sizes and uncertainty. Do not interpret here.
4. Discussion. Place findings in agronomic context and justify conclusions with the data — do not repeat the results. State scope/limitations and generality across environments.

Abstract & highlights

• Abstract (≤ 400 words): purpose, key methods (crop, environments), principal quantitative results, and the major agronomic conclusion.
• Highlights: 3–5 bullet points, each ≤ 85 characters including spaces — concrete findings, not topic labels.

Reach a general agronomy audience

• Define crop- or region-specific terms on first use; spell out acronyms; use SI units throughout.
• Lead with the agronomic point; connect results to yield and biophysical processes.
• Quantify ("a 0.8 t ha⁻¹ increase," not "a large increase"); avoid vague significance language.
• Signpost clearly so a reader can follow the argument from objective to conclusion.

Vague-to-quantified rewrite table

FCR rewards the quantified, agronomic sentence over the qualitative one. Each row shows the upgrade an editor expects between draft and submission.

Vague draft	Quantified, FCR-ready (illustrative)
"Yield increased substantially."	"Yield rose 0.9 t ha⁻¹ (12%) in high-N environments."
"The treatment was significant."	"The N×cultivar interaction was significant (SED = 0.15 t ha⁻¹, α = 0.05)."

Worked discussion-rewrite vignette (illustrative)

Illustrative. A results-echoing discussion opens: "As shown in Table 3, the new cultivar yielded 0.9 t ha⁻¹ more than the check" — restating the result, the most common FCR reviewer complaint. The interpretive rewrite leads with the mechanism and its generality: "The advantage concentrated in high-N environments, consistent with greater post-anthesis N remobilisation in the stay-green line; in the two dry site-years it vanished, marking water — not N — as limiting." Now the paragraph explains why and bounds where it travels — the move from local report to general contribution.

Anti-patterns

• A discussion that repeats the results instead of interpreting them
• A region-insider framing that never states general relevance
• An abstract that hides the quantitative finding or runs far over length
• Highlights that are topics ("Effects of nitrogen on wheat") rather than findings
• Non-SI units, undefined acronyms, or inconsistent citation style
• Conclusions not justified by the data

Style execution pass for Field Crops Research

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the crop system, environment structure, GxE logic, and yield or physiology endpoint; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: agronomy reviewers who expect field-based, multi-environment evidence and crop-level general significance.

• Do the pass: Rewrite the first two pages so each paragraph starts from the venue-level claim, not from chronology or method inventory; preserve exact source-map limits and move technical overflow to appendix or supplement.
• Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
• Sibling guard: compare against Agricultural Systems for whole-system modeling, European Journal of Agronomy for agronomic breadth, Crop Science for cultivar or breeding emphasis; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
• Submission-ready gate: do not give final advice until the pack's resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for upload-week rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Structure】intro → methods → concise results → interpretive discussion? [Y/N]
【Discussion interprets, not repeats?】[Y/N]
【Abstract】word count (≤400) + states quantitative finding? [Y/N]
【Highlights】3-5 bullets, each ≤85 chars, findings not topics? [Y/N]
【General reach】SI units + acronyms defined + quantified? [Y/N]
【Next】fcr-cover-letter

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — reference managers and Elsevier typesetting tools
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — abstract/highlights specs and structure expectations