| name | rof-writing-style |
| description | Use when revising a Review of Finance manuscript for a 150-word abstract, double-blind wording, Chicago-style references, first-order finance framing, two-round review discipline, and 60-page total manuscript constraint. |
Review of Finance Writing Style
Use this after the core result is stable. RoF is read across all of finance — empirical and
theoretical — and held to top-three-finance-journal standards, so the prose must make a
first-order contribution legible to a general finance reader fast, not read as a narrow
field-journal appendix. Polish only once identification/results (empirical) or
assumptions/results (theory) are settled.
When to trigger
- The prose buries the contribution; a reader cannot find it quickly.
- The abstract exceeds 150 words or never states the finding.
- The introduction wanders before reaching the question and the result.
Revision rules
- Keep the abstract within the 150-word limit and make the finance contribution explicit:
open with the question and approach, then state the result (a number for empirical work, the
proposition for theory), and close with the economic implication. Count the words.
- Follow the RoF intro arc: question, why it is open or hard, setting/approach, headline result
early, mechanism and interpretation, contribution against the top-three frontier, brief
roadmap.
- Preserve double-blind anonymity: no author-identifying references, acknowledgements, grants,
repositories, or self-revealing wording (and scrub PDF metadata).
- Use Chicago citation and reference style, consistently.
- Explain why the result meets top-three-finance standards before drilling into mechanics; lead
the intro with the finance question, not the estimator.
- Quantify rather than using vague intensifiers; define notation once.
- Keep the full manuscript within the 60-page total cap, including appendices, bibliography,
figures, and tables — economical prose is part of fitting the cap.
Abstract rebuild — worked example
Illustrative; the rebuilt version is 55 words, well under the 150-word ceiling:
Before: "This paper investigates the relationship between climate risk and
bank lending using a large sample of European banks and several econometric
techniques. Results show significant effects."
After: "How does flood-risk exposure reprice bank credit? Matching 1.2
million loans to address-level hazard maps across six EU countries, we show
lenders charge 14 bp more per one-s.d. risk increase - but only after the
2021 floods, implying salience rather than information moves climate
pricing."
The rebuilt abstract states question, data, number, condition, and economic message — the
skeleton a full 150-word RoF abstract scales up from.
Five edit passes for the general-finance reader
- Pass 1 — claims: every paragraph's first sentence carries a finding or an argumentative
step; delete throat-clearing about importance.
- Pass 2 — numbers: replace "substantial", "strong", and "robust" with the bp, percent,
or euro figure; at least one magnitude per headline claim.
- Pass 3 — jargon: subfield terms (SFDR Article 9, LTRO, UCITS) get a one-clause gloss at
first use, because the RoF reader spans asset pricing to household finance.
- Pass 4 — anonymity sweep: search for author surnames, "our earlier paper", grant
numbers, and repository URLs; scrub metadata after the final compile, not before.
- Pass 5 — cap: each page of prose trimmed is a page of identification evidence the
60-page ceiling lets you keep.
Prose objections from RoF reports and the fix
- "The introduction oversells" → cut adjectives, keep figures; let the event-study plot
carry the conviction the adjectives were faking.
- "I could not locate the contribution until page 7" → move the headline number into the
first two pages, per the intro arc above.
- "Well written but reads like a field-journal piece" → re-anchor the opening paragraph
in the general finance question rather than the institutional detail; the institution
is the laboratory, not the point.
Anti-patterns
- An abstract over 150 words, or one that states the topic but not the finding.
- Leading the intro with method instead of the finance question.
- Inconsistent or non-Chicago citations.
Output format
[Style diagnosis] clear / too narrow / too long / anonymity risk
[Abstract fix] <150-word target>
[Finance framing] <first-order contribution sentence>
[Page compression] <what to cut or move>
[Anonymity edits] <specific fixes>
