Read This When Your Annoying Advisor Asks You to Rewrite that Introduction...Again

A new paper,  just published Economics Letters, measures the "readability" of the introductions to papers published in the American Economic Review, and then shows that the most unreadable papers have fewer citations.

I never realized it was possible to objectively measure readability, but it seems not only does such a metric exist, but you can test the readability of your own introductions here.

Another Writing Tip: Write First Drafts by Hand

Fun fact about me: Whenever I have something really difficult to write (for example, the first draft of an introduction), I always write it out by hand in a notebook, ideally with a nice pen. I have done this ever since I can remember despite not really understanding why I do it. Shouldn't it be easier to write first drafts on a computer so that it's so much easier to rewrite? It turns out that there is scientific evidence supporting my "seemingly irrational" style. 

Read this article showing that old-school writing tools (like pen and paper) increase creativity, concentration, etc.! 

Why? "The reason these writers choose old-school tools is that when it comes to writing, computers are too efficient and make changing things too easy, and this ease can slow things down. Writing by hand allows writers who pen their drafts to proceed in a linear fashion rather than continually being tempted to rearrange words on the screen before they know precisely where the story is going." 

I like to write by hand because it feels..less official. I can write anything in my notebook. I will have to rewrite anyway on the computer. I have no idea if this makes sense, but I will stick to it. Another perk: turning off your computer means no interruptions from email and twitter, etc.! 

Read the entire article for more science and more famous people who like to write things by hand (like J.K. Rowling and Stephen King). 

But my favorite advice from the article on how to write: “one word after another.”  Love it! 

More on Writing Introductions

In the past few weeks, several of my students have been busy perfecting their introductions. What I have been trying to tell them: Writing introductions is really hard! Nobody writes a perfect (or anywhere close to perfect) introduction the first time around. But they're really important. Not only because often that's the only part of the paper that actually gets read, but also because writing that introduction helps you think more carefully about your own paper--why it's important, what you actually do, etc. Often times, it is when I'm writing the introduction that I think about how to improve the paper. 

But when you're first starting, it is of course helpful to have a guide, a step-by-step approach. I have already shown you one formula for writing introductions.  Of course, use that as a starting point, but I will say that different papers often require different formats. 

The good news: You are (probably) not writing the first ever paper on your topic.

What does this mean: You can use the most closely related papers as a guide ("as a guide" does not mean, copy the structure exactly!) for writing your own introduction. 

My specific suggestion: Find the 3-4 most closely related papers to yours. One should use your empirical technique, another one with your dependent variable, another one using your data source, etc. Write outlines of all of these introductions and think about why the authors chose that particular structure. Then write your own potential outline for your introduction. Better yet, maybe write two potential outlines. If you're my student, feel free to show me your proposed outline before getting into the details of paragraph structure. 

For insights on how to make and think about these outlines, see this guide on how to write introductions written by Raul Pacheco-Vega. 

And then get to writing. And rewriting. And re-rewriting.