jf-writing-style

Writing Style & Exposition (jf-writing-style)

When to trigger

• The introduction does not deliver the question, finding, and magnitude in the first page
• Prose is dense, jargon-heavy, or written for a subfield rather than the broad AFA reader
• The main finding is buried; the reader has to work to extract the takeaway
• Sentences hedge so much the claim disappears

JF house voice: accessible, precise, general-interest

JF is the AFA flagship, read across asset pricing, corporate finance, banking, microstructure, and household finance by 8,000+ readers. Writing must be accessible to a finance reader outside your subfield while staying precise. The manuscript also faces a 60-page limit (≥1.5 spacing, 12-pt font), so lead with economics and offload technical depth to the Internet Appendix (bundled at the end of the same PDF; see jf-internet-appendix) rather than padding the body.

The JF introduction (first ~3 pages do the work)

In order: (1) the question and why it matters — general-interest, concrete; (2) what you do — design/data/test in plain terms; (3) what you find — headline result with its economic magnitude in interpretable units; (4) why it is credible — the source of variation or the test; (5) contribution — the closest papers and your delta (see jf-literature-positioning); (6) brief roadmap. A reader who stops at page 3 should know the question, the answer, its size, and why to believe it.

Sentence-level discipline

• Active voice and short declaratives for main claims.
• State magnitudes in interpretable units (bps, % of market cap, Sharpe gain), not only t-stats.
• Define notation once; do not re-derive in prose what a table shows.
• Cut hedging stacks to one calibrated claim.
• Use "significant" for economic importance, not as a synonym for the p-value.

Page-one diagnostic grid

Test a JF introduction by reading only page one and asking whether each element is present — the pass an out-of-subfield editor makes:

By the bottom of page one, the reader knows…	If absent, the fix
The question and why it is first-order	Open with the stake, not the literature
What you do, in plain terms	One sentence on design/data/test, no notation
The headline finding	State the result before its caveats
Its economic magnitude in interpretable units	Add the bps / Sharpe gain / % of value
Why it is credible	Name the shock, instrument, or asset-pricing test

A subfield draft typically fails on magnitude or credibility, assuming the reader cares.

Worked vignette — rewriting a buried opening

Illustrative. A draft opens: "A large literature examines the cross-section of expected returns. We contribute to it." The result arrives three paragraphs later. The JF rewrite leads on page one:

"Firms exposed to supply-chain concentration earn 45 bps per month higher returns (Sharpe gain ≈ 0.4, illustrative). The premium survives standard factor adjustment and concentrates where arbitrage is costly, pointing to mispricing over risk."

The page-one reader now has the question, answer, size, and reason to believe; the survey citation moves into the contribution paragraph (jf-literature-positioning).

Referee-pushback patterns and the JF-specific fix

Pushback on the prose	JF-specific fix
"I read three pages before the finding"	Move question + result + magnitude to page one
"Significant at 1%' is reported as the result"	Replace with the magnitude; keep the t-stat in a note
"The body is padded toward 60 pages"	Offload derivations/notation to the Internet Appendix

Calibration anchors

• JF's voice is accessible but precise — not a popular-science register; the goal is a finance economist outside your niche following the argument. The "first three pages do the work" norm is durable, but exact length conventions vary; confirm against the journal's current author guidelines.

Checklist

• Question, finding, and economic magnitude in the first ~3 pages
• Headline number in interpretable economic units
• A non-specialist finance reader could follow the introduction
• Heavy notation/derivation moved to the Internet Appendix, keeping the body ≤60 pages
• Active voice; calibrated (not reflexive) hedging
• Abstract matches the introduction's claims

Anti-patterns

• Opening with three paragraphs of literature before the question
• Reporting "significant at the 1% level" as if it were the finding
• Subfield jargon with no plain-language gloss for the broad AFA reader
• Padding the body toward the 60-page cap instead of using the Internet Appendix
• Over-hedged claims that blur the contribution

Output format

【Question+finding+magnitude in first 3 pp?】yes / no
【Magnitude in economic units?】yes / no
【Accessible to non-specialist?】yes / no
【Notation moved to Internet Appendix?】yes / no
【Body ≤60 pp / hedging trimmed?】yes / no
【Next step】jf-submission