Writing the Empirical Journal Article

Daryl J. Bem

Cornell University

Planning Your Article

Which Article Should You Write? 2

Analyzing Data 2

Reporting the Findings 2

How Should You Write? 3

For Whom Should You Write? 3

Writing Your Article 4

The Shape of An Article 4

The Introduction 4

The Opening Statements 4

Examples of Examples 5

The Literature Review 5

Citations 6

Criticizing Previous Work 6

Ending the Introduction 6

The Method Section 6

The Results Section 7

Setting the Stage 7

Presenting the Findings 8

Figures and Tables 9

On Statistics 9

The Discussion Section 9

The Title and Abstract 10

Rewriting and Polishing Your Article 11

Some Matters of Style 12

Omit Needless Words 12

Avoid Metacomments on the Writing 13

Use Repetition and Parallel Construction 13

Jargon 14

Voice and Self-Reference 14

Tense 14

Avoid Language Bias 14

Research Participants 14

Sex and Gender 14

Racial and Ethnic Identity 15

Sexual Orientation 15

Disabilities 16

Common Errors of Grammar and Usage 16

Compared with versus Compared to 16

Data 16

Different from versus Different than 16

Since versus Because 16

That versus Which 16

While versus Although, But, Whereas 16

Publishing Your Article 16

References 17

A version of this article appears in Darley, J. M., Zanna, M. P., & Roediger III, H. L. (Eds) (2003). The Compleat Academic:

A Practical Guide for the Beginning Social Scientist, 2nd Edition. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 2

You have conducted a study and analyzed the data.

Now it is time to write. To publish. To tell the world what

you have learned. The purpose of this article is to enhance

the chances that some journal editor will let you do so.

If you are new to this enterprise, you may find it

helpful to consult two additional sources of information.

For detailed information on the proper format of a journal

article, see the Publication Manual of the American Psy-

chological Association (APA, 2001) and recent articles in

the journal to which you plan to submit your manuscript.

For renewing your acquaintance with the formal and sty-

listic elements of English prose, you can read Chapter 2

of the Publication Manual or any one of several style

manuals. I recommend The Elements of Style by Strunk

and White (2000). It is brief, witty, and inexpensive.

Because I write, review, and edit primarily for jour-

nals in personality and social psychology, I have drawn

most of my examples from those areas. Colleagues assure

me, however, that the guidelines set forth here are also

pertinent for articles in experimental psychology and bi-

opsychology. Similarly, this article focuses on the report

of an empirical study, but the general writing suggestions

apply as well to the theoretical articles, literature reviews,

and methodological contributions that also appear in our

journals. (Specific guidance for preparing a literature re-

view article for Psychological Bulletin can be found in

Bem, 1995.)

Planning Your Article

Which Article Should You Write?

There are two possible articles you can write: (a) the

article you planned to write when you designed your

study or (b) the article that makes the most sense now that

you have seen the results. They are rarely the same, and

the correct answer is (b).

The conventional view of the research process is that

we first derive a set of hypotheses from a theory, design

and conduct a study to test these hypotheses, analyze the

data to see if they were confirmed or disconfirmed, and

then chronicle this sequence of events in the journal arti-

cle. If this is how our enterprise actually proceeded, we

could write most of the article before we collected the

data. We could write the introduction and method sections

completely, prepare the results section in skeleton form,

leaving spaces to be filled in by the specific numerical

results, and have two possible discussion sections ready to

go, one for positive results, the other for negative results.

But this is not how our enterprise actually proceeds.

Psychology is more exciting than that, and the best jour-

nal articles are informed by the actual empirical findings

from the opening sentence. Before writing your article,

then, you need to Analyze Your Data. Herewith, a ser-

monette on the topic.

Analyzing Data. Once upon a time, psychologists ob-

served behavior directly, often for sustained periods of

time. No longer. Now, the higher the investigator goes up

the tenure ladder, the more remote he or she typically

becomes from the grounding observations of our science.

If you are already a successful research psychologist, then

you probably haven’t seen a participant for some time.

Your graduate assistant assigns the running of a study to a

bright undergraduate who writes the computer program

that collects the data automatically. And like the modern

dentist, the modern psychologist rarely even sees the data

until they have been cleaned by human or computer hy-

gienists.

To compensate for this remoteness from our partici-

pants, let us at least become intimately familiar with the

record of their behavior: the data. Examine them from

every angle. Analyze the sexes separately. Make up new

composite indexes. If a datum suggests a new hypothesis,

try to find additional evidence for it elsewhere in the data.

If you see dim traces of interesting patterns, try to reor-

ganize the data to bring them into bolder relief. If there

are participants you don’t like, or trials, observers, or in-

terviewers who gave you anomalous results, drop them

(temporarily). Go on a fishing expedition for some-

thing—anything —interesting.

No, this is not immoral. The rules of scientific and

statistical inference that we overlearn in graduate school

apply to the “Context of Justification.” They tell us what

we can conclude in the articles we write for public con-

sumption, and they give our readers criteria for deciding

whether or not to believe us. But in the “Context of Dis-

covery,” there are no formal rules, only heuristics or

strategies. How does one discover a new phenomenon?

Smell a good idea? Have a brilliant insight into behavior?

Create a new theory? In the confining context of an em-

pirical study, there is only one strategy for discovery:

exploring the data.

Yes, there is a danger. Spurious findings can emerge

by chance, and we need to be cautious about anything we

discover in this way. In limited cases, there are statistical

techniques that correct for this danger. But there are no

statistical correctives for overlooking an important dis-

covery because we were insufficiently attentive to the

data. Let us err on the side of discovery.

Reporting the Findings. When you are through ex-

ploring, you may conclude that the data are not strong

enough to justify your new insights formally, but at least

you are now ready to design the “right” study. If you still

plan to report the current data, you may wish to mention

the new insights tentatively, stating honestly that they

remain to be tested adequately. Alternatively, the data

may be strong enough to justify recentering your article

around the new findings and subordinating or even ig-

noring your original hypotheses.

This is not advice to suppress negative results. If your

study was genuinely designed to test hypotheses that de-

rive from a formal theory or are of wide general interest

for some other reason, then they should remain the focus

of your article. The integrity of the scientific enterprise

requires the reporting of disconfirming results.

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 3

But this requirement assumes that somebody out

there cares about the hypotheses. Many respectable stud-

ies are explicitly exploratory or are launched from specu-

lations of the “I-wonder-if ...” variety. If your study is one

of these, then nobody cares if you were wrong. Contrary

to the conventional wisdom, science does not care how

clever or clairvoyant you were at guessing your results

ahead of time. Scientific integrity does not require you to

lead your readers through all your wrongheaded hunches

only to show— voila!—they were wrongheaded. A jour-

nal article should not be a personal history of your still-

born thoughts.

Your overriding purpose is to tell the world what you

have learned from your study. If your results suggest a

compelling framework for their presentation, adopt it and

make the most instructive findings your centerpiece.

Think of your dataset as a jewel. Your task is to cut and

polish it, to select the facets to highlight, and to craft the

best setting for it. Many experienced authors write the

results section first.

But before writing anything, Analyze Your Data!

End of sermonette.

How Should You Write?

The primary criteria for good scientific writing are

accuracy and clarity. If your article is interesting and

written with style, fine. But these are subsidiary virtues.

First strive for accuracy and clarity.

The first step toward clarity is good organization, and

the standardized format of a journal article does much of

the work for you. It not only permits readers to read the

report from beginning to end, as they would any coherent

narrative, but also to scan it for a quick overview of the

study or to locate specific information easily by turning

directly to the relevant section. Within that format, how-

ever, it is still helpful to work from an outline of your

own. This enables you to examine the logic of the se-

quence, to spot important points that are omitted or mis-

placed, and to decide how best to divide the labor of pres-

entation between the introduction and final discussion

(about which, more later).

The second step toward clarity is to write simply and

directly. A journal article tells a straightforward tale of a

circumscribed problem in search of a solution. It is not a

novel with subplots, flashbacks, and literary allusions, but

a short story with a single linear narrative line. Let this

line stand out in bold relief. Don’t make your voice strug-

gle to be heard above the ambient noise of cluttered writ-

ing. You are justifiably proud of your 90th percentile ver-

bal aptitude, but let it nourish your prose, not glut it.

Write simply and directly.

For Whom Should You Write?

Scientific journals are published for specialized audi-

ences who share a common background of substantive

knowledge and methodological expertise. If you wish to

write well, you should ignore this fact. Psychology en-

compasses a broader range of topics and methodologies

than do most other disciplines, and its findings are fre-

quently of interest to a wider public. The social psycholo-

gist should be able to read a Psychometrika article on

logistic analysis; the personality theorist, a biopsychology

article on hypothalamic function; and the congressional

aide with a BA in history, a Journal of Personality and

Social Psychology article on causal attribution.

Accordingly, good writing is good teaching. Direct

your writing to the student in Psychology 101, your col-

league in the Art History Department, and your grand-

mother. No matter how technical or abstruse your article

is in its particulars, intelligent nonpsychologists with no

expertise in statistics or experimental design should be

able to comprehend the broad outlines of what you did

and why. They should understand in general terms what

was learned. And above all, they should appreciate why

someone—anyone—should give a damn. The introduc-

tion and discussion sections in particular should be acces-

sible to this wider audience.

The actual technical materials—those found primar-

ily in the method and results sections—should be aimed at

a reader one level of expertise less specialized than the

audience for which the journal is primarily published.

Assume that the reader of your article in Psychometrika

knows about regression, but needs some introduction to

logistic analysis. Assume that the reader of the Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology knows about person

perception but needs some introduction to dispositional

and situational attributions.

Many of the writing techniques suggested in this arti-

cle are thus teaching techniques designed to make your

article comprehensible to the widest possible audience.

They are also designed to remain invisible or transparent

to your readers, thereby infusing your prose with a “sub-

liminal pedagogy.” Good writing is good teaching.

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 4

Writing Your Article

The Shape of an Article

An article is written in the shape of an hourglass. It begins with broad general statements, progressively narrows down to

the specifics of your study, and then broadens out again to more general considerations. Thus:

The introduction begins broadly:

“Individuals differ radically from one another in the degree

to which they are willing and able to express their emo-

tions.”

It becomes more specific:

“Indeed, the popular view is that such emotional expressive-

ness is a central difference between men and women.... But

the research evidence is mixed...”

And more so:

“There is even some evidence that men may actually...”

Until you are ready to introduce your own study in concep-

tual terms:

“In this study, we recorded the emotional reactions of both

men and women to filmed...”

The method and results sections are the most specific, the

“neck” of the hourglass:

(Method) One hundred male and 100 female undergraduates

were shown one of two movies...”

“(Results) Table 1 shows that men in the father-watching

condition cried significantly more...”

The discussion section begins with the implications of your

study:

“These results imply that sex differences in emotional ex-

pressiveness are moderated by two kinds of variables...”

It becomes broader:

“Not since Charles Darwin’s first observations has psychol-

ogy contributed as much new...”

And more so:

“If emotions can incarcerate us by hiding our complexity, at

least their expression can liberate us by displaying our

authenticity.”

This closing statement might be a bit grandiose for

some journals—I’m not even sure what it means—but if

your study is carefully executed and conservatively inter-

preted, most editors will permit you to indulge yourself a

bit at the two broad ends of the hourglass. Being dull only

appears to be a prerequisite for publishing in the profes-

sional journals.

The Introduction

The Opening Statements. The first task of the article

is to introduce the background and nature of the problem

being investigated. Here are four rules of thumb for your

opening statements:

1. Write in English prose, not psychological jargon.

2. Do not plunge unprepared readers into the middle

of your problem or theory. Take the time and space nec-

essary to lead them up to the formal or theoretical state-

ment of the problem step by step.

3. Use examples to illustrate theoretical points or to

introduce unfamiliar conceptual or technical terms. The

more abstract the material, the more important such ex-

amples become.

4. Whenever possible, try to open with a statement

about people (or animals), not psychologists or their re-

search (This rule is almost always violated. Don’t use

journals as a model here.)

Examples of Opening Statements:

Wrong: Several years ago, Ekman (1972), Izard

(1977), Tomkins (1980), and Zajonc (1980) pointed to

psychology’s neglect of the affects and their expression.

[Okay for somewhere in the introduction, but not the

opening statement.]

Right: Individuals differ radically from one another in

the degree to which they are willing and able to express

their emotions.

Wrong: Research in the forced-compliance paradigm

has focused on the effects of predecisional alternatives

and incentive magnitude.

Wrong: Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance

received a great deal of attention during the latter part of

the twentieth century.

Right: The individual who holds two beliefs that are

inconsistent with one another may feel uncomfortable.

For example, the person who knows that he or she enjoys

smoking but believes it to be unhealthy may experience

discomfort arising from the inconsistency or disharmony

between these two thoughts or cognitions. This feeling of

discomfort was called cognitive dissonance by social psy-

chologist Leon Festinger (1957), who suggested that indi-

viduals will be motivated to remove this dissonance in

whatever way they can.

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 5

Note how this last example leads the reader from fa-

miliar terms (beliefs, inconsistency, discomfort, thoughts)

through transition terms (disharmony, cognitions) to the

unfamiliar technical term cognitive dissonance, thereby

providing an explicit, if nontechnical, definition of it. The

following example illustrates how one might define a

technical term (ego control) and identify its conceptual

status (a personality variable) more implicitly:

The need to delay gratification, control impulses, and

modulate emotional expression is the earliest and most

ubiquitous demand that society places upon the devel-

oping child. And because success at so many of life’s

tasks depends critically upon the individual’s mastery

of such ego control, evidence for life-course continui-

ties in this central personality domain should be read-

ily obtained.

And finally, here is an example in which the techni-

cal terms are defined only by the context. Note, however,

that the technical abbreviation, MAO, is still identified

explicitly when it is first introduced.

In the continuing search for the biological correlates of

psychiatric disorder, blood platelets are now a prime

target of investigation. In particular, reduced mono-

amine oxidase (MAO) activity in the platelets is

sometimes correlated with paranoid symptomatology,

auditory hallucinations or delusions in chronic schizo-

phrenia, and a tendency towards psychopathology in

non-clinical samples of men. Unfortunately, these ob-

servations have not always replicated, casting doubt

on the hypothesis that MAO activity is, in fact, a bio-

logical marker in psychiatric disorder. Even the gen-

eral utility of the platelet model as a key to central

nervous system abnormalities in schizophrenia re-

mains controversial. The present study attempts to

clarify the relation of MAO activity to symptomatol-

ogy in chronic schizophrenia.

This kind of writing would not appear in Newsweek,

and yet it is still comprehensible to an intelligent layper-

son who may know nothing about blood platelets, MAO

activity, or biological markers. The structure of the writ-

ing itself adequately defines the relationships among these

things and provides enough context to make the basic idea

of the study and its rationale clear. At the same time, this

introduction is not condescending nor will it bore the

technically sophisti-cated reader. The pedagogy that

makes this introduction accessible to the nonspecialist

will not only be transparent to the specialist, but will en-

hance the clarity of the article for both readers.

Examples of Examples. When developing complex

conceptual arguments or introducing technical materials,

it is important not only to provide your readers with illus-

trative examples, but to select the examples with care. In

particular, you should try to compose one or two exam-

ples that anticipate your actual findings and then use them

recurrently to make several interrelated conceptual points.

For example, in one of my own studies of trait consis-

tency, some participants were consistently friendly but not

consistently conscientious (Bem & Allen, 1974). Ac-

cordingly, we used examples of friendliness and consci-

entiousness throughout the introduction to clarify and

illustrate our theoretical points about the subtleties of trait

consistency. This pedagogical technique strengthens the

thematic coherence of an article and silently prepares the

reader for understanding the results. It also shortens the

article by removing the need to explain the theory once in

the introduction with hypothetical examples and then

again in the context of the actual results.

This article you are now reading itself provides ex-

amples of recurring examples. Although you do not know

it yet, the major example will be the fictitious study of sex

differences in emotional expression introduced earlier to

illustrate the hourglass shape of an article. I deliberately

constructed the study and provided a sufficient overview

of it at the beginning so that I could draw upon it

throughout the article. Watch for its elaboration as we

proceed. I chose dissonance theory as a second example

because most psychologists are already familiar with it; I

can draw upon this shared resource without having to

expend a lot of space explaining it. But just in case you

are not familiar with it, I introduced it first in the context

of “examples of opening statements” where I could bring

you in from the beginning—just as you should do with

your own readers. And finally, the Bem-Allen article on

trait consistency, mentioned in the previous paragraph,

has some special attributes that will earn it additional

cameo appearances as we continue.

The Literature Review. After making the opening

statements, summarize the current state of knowledge in

the area of investigation. What previous research has been

done on the problem? What are the pertinent theories of

the phenomenon? Although you will have familiarized

yourself with the literature before you designed your own

study, you may need to look up additional references if

your results raise a new aspect of the problem or lead you

to recast the study in a different framework. For example,

if you discover an unanticipated sex difference in your

data, you will want to determine if others have reported a

similar sex difference or findings that might explain it. If

you consider this finding important, discuss sex differ-

ences and the pertinent literature in the introduction. If

you consider it to be only a peripheral finding, then post-

pone a discussion of sex differences until the discussion

section.

The Publication Manual gives the following guide-

lines for the literature review:

Discuss the literature but do not include an exhaustive

historical review. Assume that the reader is knowl-

edgeable about the field for which you are writing and

does not require a complete digest. . . . [C]ite and ref-

erence only works pertinent to the specific issue and

not works of only tangential or general significance. If

you summarize earlier works, avoid nonessential de-

tails; instead, emphasize pertinent findings, relevant

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 6

methodological issues, and major conclusions. Refer

the reader to general surveys or reviews of the topic if

they are available. (APA, 2001, p. 16)

The Publication Manual also urges authors not to let

the goal of brevity mislead them into writing a statement

intelligible only to the specialist. One technique for de-

scribing even an entire study succinctly without sacrific-

ing clarity is to describe one variation of the procedure in

chronological sequence, letting it convey the overview of

the study at the same time. (You can use the same tech-

nique in your own method section.) Here, for example, is

a possible summary of a complicated but classic experi-

ment on cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger & Carls-

mith, 1959):

Sixty male undergraduates were randomly assigned to

one of three conditions. In the $1 condition, the par-

ticipant was first required to perform long repetitive

laboratory tasks in an individual experimental session.

He was then hired by the experimenter as an “assis-

tant” and paid $1 to tell a waiting fellow student (a

confederate) that the tasks were fun and interesting. In

the $20 condition, each participant was hired for $20

to do the same thing. In the control condition, partici-

pants simply engaged in the tasks. After the experi-

ment, each participant indicated on a questionnaire

how much he had enjoyed the tasks. The results

showed that $1 participants rated the tasks as signifi-

cantly more enjoyable than did the $20 participants,

who, in turn, did not differ from the control partici-

pants.

This kind of condensed writing looks easy. It is not,

and you will have to rewrite such summaries repeatedly

before they are both clear and succinct. The preceding

paragraph was my eighth draft.

Citations. The standard journal format permits you to

cite authors in the text either by enclosing their last names

and the year of publication in parentheses, as in A below,

or by using their names in the sentence itself, as in B.

A. “MAO activity in some individuals with schizo-

phrenia is actually higher than normal (Tse & Tung,

1949).”

B. “Tse and Tung (1949) report that MAO activity in

some individuals with schizophrenia is actually higher

than normal.”

In general, you should use form A, consigning your

colleagues to parentheses. Your narrative line should be

about MAO activity in individuals with schizophrenia, not

about Tse and Tung. Occasionally, however, you might

want the focus specifically on the authors or researchers:

“Theophrastus (280 B.C.) implies that persons are con-

sistent across situations, but Montaigne (1580) insists that

they are not. Only Mischel (1968), Peterson (1968), and

Vernon (1964), however, have actually surveyed the evi-

dence in detail.” The point here is that you have a deliber-

ate choice to make. Don’t just intermix the two formats

randomly, paying no attention to the narrative structure.

Criticizing Previous Work. If you take a dim view of

previous research or earlier articles in the domain you

reviewed, feel free to criticize and complain as strongly as

you feel is commensurate with the incompetence you

have uncovered. But criticize the work, not the investiga-

tors or authors. Ad hominem attacks offend editors and

reviewers; moreover, the person you attack is likely to be

asked to serve as one of the reviewers of your article. As a

consequence, your opportunity to address—let alone, of-

fend—readers will be nipped in the bud. I could launch

into a sermonette on communitarian values in science, but

I shall assume that this pragmatic warning is sufficient.

Ending the Introduction. End the introduction with a

brief overview of your own study. This provides a smooth

transition into the method section, which follows immedi-

ately:

Because this sex difference remains elusive, it seemed

desirable to test Zanna’s parental-role theory of emo-

tional expression in a more realistic setting. Accord-

ingly, in the study to be presented here, we exposed

men and women to filmed scenes designed to evoke

either negative or positive emotions and assessed their

emotional reactions when they thought they were be-

ing observed by one or both of their parents. We also

sought to examine the relation of emotional expression

to self-esteem.

The Method Section

The Publication Manual spells out in detail what

needs to be included in the method section of an article.

Here are some additional stylistic suggestions.

If you conducted a fairly complex experiment in

which there was a sequence of procedures or events, it is

helpful to lead the reader through the sequence as if he or

she were a participant. First give the usual overview of

the study, including the description of participants, set-

ting, and variables assessed, but then describe the experi-

ment from the participant’s vantage point. Provide sum-

maries or excerpts of what was actually said to the par-

ticipant, including any rationale or “cover story” that was

given. Describe the relevant aspects of the room. Show

sample items from questionnaires, labels on attitude

scales, copies of stimulus materials or pictures of appara-

tus. If you administered a standard personality test or at-

titude scale, describe its general properties unless it is

very familiar (e.g., the MMPI or the F scale). For exam-

ple: “Participants then filled out the Marlowe-Crowne

Social Desirability Scale, a true-false inventory that

measures the degree to which persons describe them-

selves in socially desirable terms (e.g., ‘I have never

lied’).”

The purpose of all this is to give your readers a feel

for what it was like to be a participant. (This is true even

if you used non-human participants. Thus it is more im-

portant to describe the schedule of reinforcement and the

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 7

inner dimensions of the Skinner Box—what the animal

actually experienced—then its outer dimensions and the

voltage of the power supply.) Such information often

bears importantly on the interpretation of the behavior

observed, and readers should be in a position to arrive at

their own judgments about your conclusions.

Name all groups, variables, and operations with eas-

ily recognized and remembered labels. Do not use abbre-

viations (the AMT5% group) or empty labels (Treatment

3). Instead, tell us about the success group and the failure

group, the father-watching condition and the mother-

watching condition, the teacher sample and the student

sample, and so forth. It is also better to label groups or

treatments in operational rather than theoretical terms. It

is difficult to remember that it was the high dissonance

group that was offered the small incentive and the low

dissonance group that was offered the large incentive. So

tell us instead about the $1 group and the $20 group. You

can remind us of the theoretical interpretation of these

variables later when you discuss the results.

The method and results sections share the responsi-

bility for presenting certain kinds of data that support the

reliability and validity of your substantive findings, and

you must judge where this information fits most smoothly

into the narrative and when the reader can most easily

assimilate it. For example, if you constructed a new per-

sonality scale, you need to tell us about its internal homo-

geneity and other psychometric properties. If you em-

ployed observers, tell us about interjudge agreement. If

you mailed survey questionnaires, give us the return rate

and discuss the possibility that non-respondents differed

from respondents. If you discarded certain participants,

tell us why and how many and discuss the possibility that

this limits or qualifies the conclusions you can draw. In

particular, assure us that they were not all concentrated in

the same experimental condition. (Participants discarded

during data analysis should be discussed in the results

section.)

Discuss participant dropout problems and other diffi-

culties encountered in executing the study only if they

might affect the validity or the interpretation of your re-

sults. Otherwise spare us your tales of woe. Do tell us that

some participants fled your high-stress treatment before

you could assess their physiological response, but do not

tell us that your dog ate your pigeon and you had to redo

the experiment or that you couldn’t run participants Tues-

day night because the custodian inadvertently locked the

building.

Manipulations and procedures that yielded no useful

information should be mentioned if they were adminis-

tered before you collected your main data; their presence

could have affected your findings. Usually it will be suffi-

cient to say that they yielded no information and will not

be discussed further. You probably do not need to men-

tion them at all if they were administered after you col-

lected your main data unless you think that other investi-

gators might try to pursue the same fruitless path. Some-

times, however, a “null” result is surprising or of interest

in its own right. In this case, it should be treated as a

regular datum in your results section.

After presenting the methods you used in your study,

discuss any ethical issues they might raise. If the research

design required you to keep participants uninformed or

even misinformed about the procedures, how did you tell

them about this afterwards? How did you obtain their

prior consent? Were they free to withdraw at any time?

Were they subjected to any embarrassment or discomfort?

What steps were followed to protect their anonymity?

Were you observing people who were unaware of that

fact?

If your study raises any of these issues, you should be

prepared to justify your procedures. Moreover, you need

to assure us that your participants were treated with dig-

nity and that they left your study with their self-esteem

intact and their respect for you and psychology enhanced

rather than diminished. If you used non-human partici-

pants—especially dogs, cats, or primates—then you need

to address analogous questions about their care and treat-

ment.

End the method section with a brief summary of the

procedure and its overall purpose. Your grandmother

should be able to skim the method section without reading

it; the final paragraph should bring her back “on line.”

The Results Section

In short articles or reports of single empirical studies,

the results and discussion are often combined. But if you

need to integrate several different kinds of results or dis-

cuss several general matters, then prepare a separate dis-

cussion section. There is, however, no such thing as a

pure results section without an accompanying narrative.

You cannot just throw numbers at readers and expect

them to retain them in memory until they reach the dis-

cussion. In other words, write the results section in Eng-

lish prose.

Setting the Stage. Before you can present your re-

sults, there are two preliminary matters that need to be

handled. First, you should present evidence that your

study successfully set up the conditions for testing your

hypotheses or answering your questions. If your study

required you to produce one group of participants in a

happy mood and another in a depressed mood, show us in

this section that mood ratings made by the two groups

were significantly different. If you divided your partici-

pants into groups, assure us that these groups did not dif-

fer on some unintended variable that might bear upon the

interpretation of your results (e.g., social class, intelli-

gence). If your study required you to misinform partici-

pants about the procedures, how do you know that they

were not suspicious, that participants who participated

earlier had not informed participants who participated

later, and that your “cover story” produced the state of

belief required for the test of your hypotheses?

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 8

Here is also where you can put some of the data dis-

cussed in “The Method Section”: Reliabilities of testing

instruments, judges, and observers; return rates on mail

surveys; and participant dropout problems.

Not all of these matters need to be discussed at the

beginning of the results section. In addition to data you

think fit better in the method section, some of these other

matters might better be postponed until the discussion

section when you are considering alternative explanations

of your results (e.g., the possibility that some participants

became suspicious). Again, the decision of what to in-

clude is very much a matter of judgment. It is an impor-

tant step, but do not overdo it. Get it out of the way as

quickly as possible and get on with your story.

The second preliminary matter to deal with is the

method of data analysis. First, describe any overall proce-

dures you used to convert your raw observations into

analyzable data. How were responses to your mail survey

coded for analysis? How were observers’ ratings com-

bined? Were all measures first converted to standard

scores? Some of these may also fit better into the method

section and need not be repeated. Similarly, data-

combining procedures that are highly specific can be

postponed. If you combined three measures of anxiety

into a single composite score for analysis, tell us about

that later when you are about to present the anxiety data.

Next, tell us about the statistical analysis itself. If this

is standard, describe it briefly (e.g., “All data were ana-

lyzed by two-way analyses of variance with sex of par-

ticipant and mood induction as the independent vari-

ables”). If the analysis is unconventional or makes certain

statistical assumptions your data might not satisfy, how-

ever, discuss the rationale for it, perhaps citing a reference

for readers who wish to check into it further. If your

method of analysis is new or likely to be unfamiliar to

readers of the journal, you might need to provide a full

explanation of it. Sometimes the quantitative treatment of

data is a major part of an article’s contribution. Variations

of multidimensional scaling, causal modeling, and cir-

cumplex representations of personality data, for example,

have been more important in some articles than the data to

which they were applied. In these cases, the method of

analysis and its rationale have the same epistemological

status as a theory and should be presented in the introduc-

tion to the article.

And finally, if the results section is complicated or

divided into several parts, you may wish to provide an

overview of the section: “The results are presented in

three parts. The first section presents the behavioral re-

sults for the men, followed by the parallel results for the

women. The final section presents the attitudinal and

physiological data for both sexes combined.” But as I

shall argue, this kind of “metacommentary” should be

used sparingly. In most cases, the prose itself should

make it unnecessary.

Presenting the Findings. The general rule in report-

ing your findings is to give the forest first and then the

trees. This is true of the results section as a whole: Begin

with the central findings, and then move to more periph-

eral ones. It is also true within subsections: State the basic

finding first, and then elaborate or qualify it as necessary.

Similarly, discuss an overall measure of aggression or

whatever first, and then move to its individual compo-

nents. Beginning with one of your most central results,

proceed as follows:

1. Remind us of the conceptual hypothesis or the

question you are asking: “It will be recalled that the men

are expected to be more emotionally expressive than the

women.” Or, “We ask, first, whether the men or the

women are more emotionally expressive?” Note that this

is a conceptual statement of the hypothesis or question.

2. Remind us of the operations performed and be-

haviors measured: “In particular, the men should produce

more tears during the showing of the film than the

women.” Or, “Do the men produce more tears during the

showing of the film than the women?” Note that this is an

operational statement of the hypothesis or question.

3. Tell us the answer immediately and in English:

“The answer is yes.” Or, “As Table 1 reveals, men do, in

fact, cry more profusely than the women.”

4. Now, and only now, speak to us in numbers. (Your

grandmother can now skip to the next result in case she

has forgotten her statistics or her reading glasses.): “Thus

the men in all four conditions produced an average of 1.4

cc more tears than the women, F (1,112) = 5.79, p <

.025.”

5. Now you may elaborate or qualify the overall con-

clusion if necessary: “Only in the father-watching condi-

tion did the men fail to produce more tears than the

women, but a specific test of this effect failed to reach

significance, t =1.58, p < .12.”

6. End each section of the results with a summary of

where things stand: “Thus, except for the father-watching

condition, which will be discussed below, the hypothesis

that men cry more than women in response to visually-

depicted grief appears to receive strong support.”

7. Lead into the next section of the results with a

smooth transition sentence: “Men may thus be more ex-

pressive than women in the domain of negative emotion,

but are they more expressive in the domain of positive

emotion? Table 2 shows they are not...” (Again, the

“bottom line” is given immediately.) As the results sec-

tion proceeds, continue to summarize and “update” the

reader’s store of information frequently. The reader

should not have to keep looking back to retrieve the major

points of your plot line.

By structuring the results section in this way, by

moving from forest to trees, by announcing each result

clearly in prose before wading into numbers and statistics,

and by summarizing frequently, you permit a reader to

decide just how much detail he or she wants to pursue at

each juncture and to skip ahead to the next main point

whenever that seems desirable.

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 9

Figures and Tables. Unless a set of findings can be

stated in one or two numbers, results that are sufficiently

important to be stressed should be accompanied by a fig-

ure or table summarizing the relevant data. The basic rule

of presentation is that a reader be able to grasp your major

findings either by reading the text or by looking at the

figures and tables. Thus, figures and tables must be titled

and labeled clearly and completely, even if that means

constructing a lengthy title or heading (“Mean number of

tears produced by two affective films as a function of

affect valence, participant sex, parental observation, and

self-esteem”). Within the text itself, lead the reader by the

hand through a table to point out the results of interest:

“As shown in the first column of Table 2, men produce

more tears (2.33 cc) than women (1.89 cc).... Of particular

interest is the number of tears produced when both father

and mother watch (rows 3 and 4)...” Do not just wave in

the general direction of the table and expect the reader to

ferret out the information. For detailed information on

figures and tables, see the Publication Manual (APA,

2001).

On Statistics. As you know, every comparison be-

tween groups or relationship between variables should be

accompanied by its level of statistical significance. Oth-

erwise, readers have no way of knowing whether the

findings could have emerged by chance. But despite the

importance of inferential statistics, they are not the heart

of your narrative and should be subordinated to the de-

scriptive results. Whenever possible, state a result first

and then give its statistical significance, but in no case

should you ever give the statistical test alone without in-

terpreting it substantively. Do not tell us that the three-

way interaction with sex, parent condition, and self-

esteem was significant at the .05 level unless you tell us

immediately and in English that men are less expressive

than women in the negative conditions if father

watches—but only for men with low self-esteem.

If your experiment used an analysis of variance de-

sign, your data analysis will automatically display the

effects of several independent variables on a single de-

pendent variable. If this organization is consonant with a

smooth presentation of your results, lucky you. Go with it.

But do not be a prisoner of ANOVA! If the narrative

flows more smoothly by discussing the effects of a single

independent variable on several conceptually related de-

pendent variables, tear your ANOVA results apart and

reorganize them. Statistical designs are all right in their

place, but you—and your prose—are master; they are

slave.

Just as your method section should give readers a feel

for the procedures used, so too, the results section should

give them a feel for the behavior observed. Select de-

scriptive indexes or statistics that convey the behavior of

your participants as vividly as possible. Tell us the per-

cent of children in your study who hit the Bobo doll or the

mean number of times they did so. Remind us that a score

of 3.41 on your 5-point rating scale of aggression lies

between “slightly aggressive” and “moderately aggres-

sive.”

Do this even if the statistical analyses must be per-

formed on some more indirect datum (e.g., the arcsin

transform of the number of Bobo hits or the sum of three

standardized aggression scores.) Display these indirect

indexes, too, if you wish, but give the readers’ intuitions

first priority. For example, in our study of trait consis-

tency, we analyzed a standard-score index of individual

consistency, but we discussed the results in terms of the

more familiar correlation coefficient—on which no le-

gitimate statistical analysis could be performed (Bem &

Allen, 1974).

After you have presented your quantitative results, it

is often useful to become more informal and briefly to

describe the behavior of particular individuals in your

study. Again, the point is not to prove something, but to

add richness to your findings, to share with readers the

feel of the behavior: “Indeed, two of the men used an en-

tire box of Kleenex during the showing of the heart op-

eration but would not pet the baby kitten owned by the

secretary.”

The Discussion Section

As noted earlier, the discussion section can either be

combined with the results section or appear separately. In

either case, it forms a cohesive narrative with the intro-

duction, and you should expect to move materials back

and forth between these two sections as you rewrite and

reshape the report. Topics that are central to your story

will appear in the introduction and probably again in the

discussion. More peripheral topics may not be brought up

at all until after the presentation of the results. The discus-

sion is also the bottom of the hourglass-shaped format and

thus proceeds from specific matters about your study to

more general concerns (about methodological strategies,

for example) to the broadest generalizations you wish to

make. The sequence of topics is often the mirror image of

the sequence in the introduction.

Begin the discussion by telling us what you have

learned from the study. Open with a clear statement on

the support or nonsupport of the hypotheses or the an-

swers to the questions you first raised in the introduction.

But do not simply reformulate and repeat points already

summarized in the results section. Each new statement

should contribute something new to the reader’s under-

standing of the problem. What inferences can be drawn

from the findings? These inferences may be at a level

quite close to the data or may involve considerable ab-

straction, perhaps to the level of a larger theory regarding,

say, emotion or sex differences. What are the theoretical,

practical, or even the political implications of the results?

It is also appropriate at this point to compare your re-

sults with those reported by other investigators and to

discuss possible shortcomings of your study, conditions

that might limit the extent of legitimate generalization or

otherwise qualify your inferences. Remind readers of the

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 10

characteristics of your participant sample, the possibility

that it might differ from other populations to which you

might want to generalize; of specific characteristics of

your methods that might have influenced the outcome; or

of any other factors that might have operated to produce

atypical results.

But do not dwell compulsively on every flaw! In par-

ticular, be willing to accept negative or unexpected results

without a tortured attempt to explain them away. Do not

make up long, involved, pretzel-shaped theories to ac-

count for every hiccup in the data. There is a -.73 correla-

tion between the clarity of an investigator’s results and

the length of his or her discussion section. Do not con-

tribute to this shameful statistic.

Ah, but suppose that, on the contrary, your results

have led you to a grand new theory that injects startling

clarity into your data and revolutionizes your view of the

problem area. Doesn’t this justify a long discussion sec-

tion? No. In this case, you should write the article so that

you begin with your new theory. As noted above, your

task is to provide the most informative and compelling

framework for your study from the opening sentence. If

your new theory does that, don’t wait until the discussion

section to spring it on us. A journal article is not a chro-

nology of your thought processes.

The discussion section also includes a consideration

of questions that remain unanswered or that have been

raised by the study itself, along with suggestions for the

kinds of research that would help to answer them. In fact,

suggesting additional research is probably the most com-

mon way of ending a research report.

Common, but dull. The hourglass shape of an article

implies that your final words should be broad general

statements of near-cosmic significance, not precious de-

tails of interest only to psychologists. Thus the statement,

“Further research will be needed before it is clear whether

the androgyny scale should be scored as a single continu-

ous dimension or partitioned into a 4-way typology,”

might well be appropriate somewhere in a discussion sec-

tion, but, please, not your final farewell. In my opinion,

only Montaigne was clever enough to end an article with

a statement about further research: “Because [the study of

motivation] is a high and hazardous undertaking, I wish

fewer people would meddle with it” (1580/1943).

You should probably settle for more modest injunc-

tions: “If gender schema theory has a political message, it

is.. .that... human behaviors and personality attributes

should no longer be linked with gender, and society

should stop projecting gender into situations irrelevant to

genitalia. The feminist prescription, then, is not that the

individual be androgynous, but that the society be gender-

aschematic” (S. Bem, 1985).

But in any case, end with a bang, not a whimper.

The Title and Abstract

The title and abstract of your article permit potential

readers to get a quick overview of your study and to de-

cide if they wish to read the article itself. Titles and ab-

stracts are also indexed and compiled in reference works

and computerized databases. For this reason they should

accurately reflect the content of the article and include

key words that will ensure their retrieval from a database.

You should compose the title and abstract after you have

completed the article and have a firm view of its structure

and content.

The recommended length for a title is 10 to 12 words.

It should be fully explanatory when standing alone and

identify the theoretical issues or the variables under in-

vestigation. Because you will not be able to mention all

the features of your study in the title (or even in the ab-

stract), you must decide which are most important. Once

again, the data should guide you. For example, the most

instructive findings from our fictitious study on emotional

expression should determine which of the following is the

most appropriate title: “Laughing versus Crying: Sex Dif-

ferences in the Public Display of Positive and Negative

Emotions”; “Effects of Being Observed by Parents on the

Emotional Responses of Men and Women to Visual

Stimuli”; “Emotional Responses to Visual Stimuli as a

Function of Sex and Self-Esteem”; “Sex Differences in

the Public Display of Emotion as a Function of the Ob-

serving Audience”; “Public versus Private Displays of

Emotion in Men and Women.”

The abstract of an empirical article should not exceed

120 words. It should contain the problem under investi-

gation (in one sentence if possible); the participants,

specifying pertinent characteristics, such as number, type,

age, sex, and species; the experimental method, including

the apparatus, data-gathering procedures, and complete

test names; the findings, including statistical significance

levels; and the conclusion and the implications or appli-

cations.

Clearly the abstract must be compact, and this re-

quirement leads many inexperienced writers to make it

unintelligible. Remove unnecessary words and eliminate

less important details of method and results. But then let it

breathe. In particular, allow yourself the space to make

the problem under investigation clear to a casually

browsing reader. Often you can plagiarize and abbreviate

key statements from the article itself. Here is an example:

When are men more emotionally expressive than

women? One hundred male and 100 female under-

graduates were individually shown a sad or a happy

film, while being observed by one or both of their par-

ents. Judges blind to condition rated participants’ fa-

cial expressions, and a Lachrymeter measured their

tear volume. Men cried more during the sad movie but

laughed less during the happy movie than did the

women (interaction, p < .02). However, men in the

father-watching condition with low self-esteem (Dar-

ley Self-Concept Scale) cried less than all other par-

ticipants (p < .05). It is suggested that sex differences

in emotional expression are moderated by the valence

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 11

of the emotion and—for men—by self-esteem and

conditions of being observed.

If the conceptual contribution of your article is more

important than the supporting study, this can be reflected

in the abstract by omitting experimental details and giving

more space to the theoretical material. Here is the title and

abstract from our Psychological Review article on trait

consistency (revised to conform to the new 100 word

limit on abstracts of reviews and theoretical articles):

On Predicting Some of the People Some of the Time:

The Search for Cross-Situational Consistencies in

Behavior

The recurring controversy over the existence of cross-

situational consistencies in behavior is sustained by

the discrepancy between our intuitions, which affirm

their existence, and the research literature, which does

not. It is argued that the nomothetic assumptions of the

traditional research paradigm are incorrect and that

higher validity coefficients would be obtained if the

idiographic assumptions used by our intuitions were

adopted. A study is reported which shows it is possible

to predict who will be cross-situationally consistent

and who will not. Personality assessment must not

only attend to situations—as has been recently

urged—but to persons as well (Bem & Allen, 1974).

Rewriting and Polishing Your Article

For many authors revising an article is unmitigated

agony. Even proofreading is painful. And so they don’t.

So relieved to get a draft done, they send it off to the

journal thinking that they can clean up the writing after it

has been accepted. Alas, that day rarely comes. Some may

find solace in the belief that the manuscript probably

would have been rejected even if it had been extensively

revised and polished; after all, most of psychology jour-

nals accept only 15 to 20% of all manuscripts submitted.

But from my experience as an editor, I believe that the

difference between the manuscripts accepted and the top

15 to 20% of those rejected is frequently the difference

between good and less good writing. Moral: Do not ex-

pect journal reviewers to discern your brilliance through

the smog of polluted writing. Revise your manuscript.

Polish it. Proofread it. Then submit it.

Rewriting is difficult for several reasons. First, it is

difficult to edit your own writing. You will not notice

ambiguities and explanatory gaps because you know what

you meant to say and you understand the omitted steps.

One strategy for overcoming this difficulty is to lay your

manuscript aside for awhile and then return to it later

when it has become less familiar. Sometimes it helps to

read it aloud. But there is no substitute for practicing the

art of taking the role of the nonspecialist reader, for

learning to role-play grandma. As you read, ask yourself,

“Have I been told yet what this concept means?” Has the

logic of this step been demonstrated?” “Would I know

what the independent variable is at this point?” This is

precisely the skill of the good lecturer in Psychology 101,

the ability to anticipate the audience’s level of under-

standing at each point in the presentation. Good writing is

good teaching.

But because this is not easy, you should probably

give a fairly polished copy of the manuscript to a friend or

colleague for a critical review. (If you get a critique from

two colleagues you will have simulated a trial run of a

journal’s review process.) The best readers are those who

have themselves published in the psychological journals,

but who are unfamiliar with the subject of your article. (A

student from Psychology 101 would probably be too in-

timidated to give usefully critical feedback; grandma will

be too kind.)

If your colleagues find something unclear, do not ar-

gue with them. They are right: By definition, the writing

is unclear. Their suggestions for correcting the unclarities

may be wrong, even dumb. But as unclarity detectors,

readers are never wrong. Also resist the temptation simply

to clarify their confusion verbally. Your colleagues do not

want to offend you or appear stupid, and so they will sim-

ply mumble “oh yes, of course, of course” and apologize

for not having read carefully enough. As a consequence,

you will be pacified, and your next readers, the journal

reviewers, will stumble over the same problem. They will

not apologize; they will reject.

Rewriting is difficult for a second reason: It requires

a high degree of compulsiveness and attention to detail.

The probability of writing a sentence perfectly the first

time is vanishingly small, and good writers rewrite nearly

every sentence of an article in the course of polishing

successive drafts. But even good writers differ from one

another in their approach to the first draft. Some spend a

long time carefully choosing each word and reshaping

each sentence and paragraph as they go. Others pound out

a rough draft quickly and then go back for extensive revi-

sion. Although I personally prefer the former method, I

think it wastes time. For journal articles in particular, I

think most authors should get the first draft done as

quickly as possible without agonizing over stylistic nice-

ties. But once it is done, compulsiveness and attention to

detail become the required virtues.

Finally, rewriting is difficult because it usually means

restructuring. Sometimes it is necessary to discard whole

sections of an article, add new ones, go back and do more

data analysis, and then totally reorganize the article just to

iron out a bump in the logic of the argument. Do not get

so attached to your first draft that you are unwilling to

tear it apart and rebuild it. (This is why the technique of

crafting each sentence of a first draft wastes time. That

beautiful turn of phrase that took me 40 minutes to shape

gets discarded when the article gets restructured. Worse, I

get so attached to the phrase that I resist restructuring

until I can find a new home for it.) A badly constructed

building cannot be salvaged by brightening up the wall-

paper. A badly constructed article cannot be salvaged by

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 12

changing words, inverting sentences, and shuffling para-

graphs.

Which brings me to the word processor. Its very vir-

tuosity at making these cosmetic changes may tempt you

to tinker endlessly, encouraging you in the illusion that

you are restructuring right there in front of the monitor.

Do not be fooled. You are not. A word processor—even

in conjunction with a fancy “outline mode”—is not an

adequate restructuring tool. Moreover, it can produce

flawless, physically beautiful drafts of wretched writing,

encouraging you in the illusion that they are finished

manuscripts ready to be submitted. Do not be fooled.

They are not. If you are blessed with an excellent memory

(or a very large monitor) and are confident that you can

get away with a purely electronic process of restructuring,

fine, do it. But do not be ashamed to print out a complete

draft of your manuscript, spread it out on table or floor,

take pencil, scissors, and scotch tape in hand, and then, all

by your low-tech self, have at it.

Some Matters of Style

Omit Needless Words

Virtually all experienced writers agree that any writ-

ten expression that deserves to be called vigorous writing,

whether it is a short story, an article for a professional

journal, or a complete book, is characterized by the attrib-

ute of being succinct, concise, and to the point. A sen-

tence—no matter where in the writing it occurs—should

contain no unnecessary or superfluous words, words that

stand in the way of the writer’s direct expression of his or

her meaning and purpose. In a very similar fashion, a

paragraph—the basic unit of organization in English

prose—should contain no unnecessary or superfluous

sentences, sentences that introduce peripheral content into

the writing or stray from its basic narrative line. It is in

this sense that a writer is like an artist executing a draw-

ing, and it is in this sense that a writer is like an engineer

designing a machine. Good writing should be economical

for the same reason that a drawing should have no un-

necessary lines, and good writing should be streamlined

in the same way that a machine is designed to have no

unnecessary parts, parts that contribute little or nothing to

its intended function.

This prescription to be succinct and concise is often

misunderstood and requires judicious application. It cer-

tainly does not imply that the writer must make all of his

or her sentences short and choppy or leave out all adjec-

tives, adverbs, and qualifiers. Nor does it mean that he or

she must avoid or eliminate all detail from the writing

and treat his or her subjects only in the barest skeleton or

outline form. But the requirement does imply that every

word committed to paper should tell something new to the

reader and contribute in a significant and non-redundant

way to the message that the writer is trying to convey.

* * *

You have just read a 303 word essay on brevity. It is

not a terrible first draft, but a good writer or copy editor

would take its message to heart and, by crossing out all

the non-italicized words, cut it by 81%. Savor the result:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should con-

tain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unneces-

sary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing

should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no

unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer

make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat

subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. [59

words]

This essay on brevity was written by Strunk and

White (2000, p. 23) under the heading: “Omit Needless

Words.” Obey their injunction, because it is the most im-

portant piece of advice in this article. Journal articles

should also omit needless concepts, topics, anecdotes,

asides, and footnotes. Clear any underbrush that clutters

your narrative. If a point seems peripheral to your main

theme, remove it. If you cannot bring yourself to do this,

put it in a footnote. Then when you revise your manu-

script, remove the footnote.

Copy editing other people’s writing is good practice

for improving your own. It is also less painful than editing

your own and much easier than actually writing. Any

piece of prose will do. Here was an exercise for my writ-

ing class; it was part of a letter Cornell sent out to poten-

tial graduate applicants. You may wish to try your hand at

it.

Psychology is a wide field of study, and we are not

equally strong in all parts of it. At present, we regard

our major strengths as lying in three broadly defined

domains in which we have many faculty, and a couple

of smaller areas in which also have appreciable re-

sources. The three primary areas are Biopsychology,

Experimental Psychology, and Personality and Social

Psychology; the others are Mathematical/Differential

Psychology and Experimental Psychopathology. The

areas and the relevant faculty are listed below. Please

note that this listing is informal; it does not imply that

the listed faculty members have no other interests or

can readily be fitted into predefined areas. The actual

network of faculty interests and responsibilities is too

subtle to be described in a letter such as this. The list-

ing is just a rough and ready way to tell you what the

Field of Psychology at Cornell is like. [149 words]

Here is a reasonable revision:

Psychology is a wide field, and our major strengths are

Biopsychology, Experimental Psychology, and Per-

sonality and Social Psychology. We also have re-

sources in Mathematical/Differential Psychology and

Experimental Psychopathology. The following list of

faculty within areas provides a rough guide to the

Field of Psychology at Cornell. Faculty interests are

broader than this list implies, however, and do not al-

ways neatly fit the predefined areas. [65 words, a

savings of 56%]

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 13

To maintain the vigor of your prose, try to spend at

least 15 minutes each day omitting needless words. Your

goal should be to reach at least 30% of all words encoun-

tered. (Copy edited versions of this article will be returned

unopened.)

Avoid Metacomments on the Writing

Expository writing fails its mission if it diverts the

reader’s attention to itself and away from the topic; the

process of writing should be transparent to the reader. In

particular, the prose itself should direct the flow of the

narrative without requiring you to play tour guide by

commenting on it. Do not say, “Now that I have discussed

the three theories of emotion, we can turn to the empirical

work on each of them. I will begin with the psychoana-

lytic account of affect...” Instead, move directly from your

discussion of the theories into the literature review with a

simple transition sentence such as, “Each of these three

theories has been tested empirically. Thus, the psycho-

analytic account of affect has received support in studies

that...” Do not say, “Now that we have seen the results for

negative affect, we are in a position to examine men’s and

women’s emotional expression in the realm of positive

affect. The relevant data are presented in Table 2...” In-

stead use a transition sentence that simultaneously sum-

marizes and moves the story along: “Men may thus be

more expressive than women in the domain of negative

emotion, but are they also more expressive in the domain

of positive emotion? Table 2 shows that they are not...”

Any other guideposts needed can be supplied by using

informative headings and by following the advice on

repetition and parallel construction given in the next sec-

tion.

If you feel the need to make metacomments to keep

the reader on the narrative path, then your plot line is

probably already too cluttered, the writing insufficiently

linear. Metacomments will only oppress the prose further.

Instead, copy edit. Omit needless words; don’t add them!

Use Repetition and Parallel Construction

Inexperienced writers often substitute synonyms for

recurring words and vary their sentence structure in the

mistaken belief that this is more creative, stylish, or inter-

esting. Instead of using repetition and parallel construc-

tion, as in “Men may be more expressive than women in

the domain of negative emotion, but they are not more

expressive in the domain of positive emotion,” they at-

tempt to be more creative: “Men may be more expressive

than women in the domain of negative emotion, but it is

not true that they are more willing and able than the oppo-

site sex to display the more cheerful affects.”

Such creativity is hardly more interesting, but it is

certainly more confusing. In scientific communication, it

can be deadly. When an author uses different words to

refer to the same concept in a technical article—where

accuracy is paramount—readers will justifiably wonder if

different meanings are implied. The example above is not

disastrous, and most readers will be unaware that their

understanding flickered momentarily when the prose hit a

bump. But consider the cognitive burden carried by read-

ers who must hack through this “creative” jungle:

The high-dissonance participants were paid a small

sum of money while being given a free choice of

whether or not to participate, whereas the participants

we randomly assigned to the large-incentive treatment

(the low-dissonance condition) were not offered the

opportunity to refuse.

This (fictitious) author should have written:

High dissonance participants were paid a small sum of

money and were not required to participate; low-

dissonance participants were paid a large sum of

money and were required to participate.

The wording and grammatical structure of the two

clauses are held rigidly parallel; only the variables vary.

Repetition and parallel construction are among the most

effective servants of clarity. Don’t be creative, be clear.

Repetition and parallel construction also serve clarity

at a larger level of organization. By providing the reader

with distinctive guideposts to the structure of the prose,

they can diminish or eliminate the need for metacom-

ments. Here, for example, are the opening sentences from

three of the paragraphs in the earlier section on rewriting:

2nd paragraph: “Rewriting is difficult for several rea-

sons. First...”

5th paragraph: “Rewriting is difficult for a second

reason:”

6th paragraph: “Finally, rewriting is difficult because

it...”

If I had substituted synonyms for the recurring words

or varied the grammatical structure of these opening sen-

tences, their guiding function would have been lost, the

reader’s sense of the section’s organization blurred. (I try

so hard to be helpful, and I bet you didn’t even notice.

That, of course, is the point.)

Finally, repetition and parallel construction can serve

style and creativity as well as clarity. They can provide

rhythm and punch: “A sentence should contain no unnec-

essary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences for

the same reason that a drawing should have no unneces-

sary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.” They can

establish metaphor: “A badly constructed building cannot

be salvaged by brightening up the wallpaper. A badly

constructed article cannot be salvaged by changing words,

inverting sentences, and shuffling paragraphs.” They can

add humor: “The word processor encourages you in the

illusion that you are restructuring. Do not be fooled. You

are not. The word processor encourages you in the illu-

sion that your drafts are finished manuscripts. Do not be

fooled. They are not.”

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 14

Jargon

Jargon is the specialized vocabulary of a discipline,

and it serves a number of legitimate functions in scientific

communication. A specialized term may be more general,

more precise, or freer of surplus meaning than any natural

language equivalent (e.g., the term disposition encom-

passes, and hence is more general than, beliefs, attitudes,

moods, and personality attributes; reinforcement is more

precise and freer of surplus meaning than reward). And

the technical vocabulary often makes an important con-

ceptual distinction not apprehended by the layperson’s

vocabulary (e.g., genotype versus phenotype).

But if a jargon term does not satisfy any of these cri-

teria, opt for English. Much psychological jargon has be-

come second-nature to us in the profession and serves

only to muddy our prose for the general reader. (I once

had to interrogate an author at length to learn that a prison

program for “strengthening the executive functions of the

ego” actually taught prisoners how to fill out job applica-

tions.) Unless the jargon term is extremely well known

(e.g., reinforcement), it should be defined—explicitly,

implicitly, or by example—the first time it is introduced.

(See the sample opening statements earlier in this article

for ways to do this.)

Voice and Self-Reference

In the past, scientific writers used the passive voice

almost exclusively and referred to themselves in the third

person: “This experiment was designed by the authors to

test ...” This practice produces lifeless prose and is no

longer the norm. Use the active voice unless style or con-

tent dictates otherwise; and, in general, keep self-

reference to a minimum. Remember that you are not the

topic of your article. You should not refer to yourself as

“the author” or “the investigator.” (You may refer to “the

experimenter” in the method section, however, even if

that happens to be you; the experimenter is part of the

topic under discussion there.) Do not refer to yourself as

“we” unless there really are two or more authors. You

may refer to yourself as “I,” but do so sparingly. It tends

to distract the reader from the topic, and it is better to re-

main in the background. Leave the reader in the back-

ground, too. Do not say, “The reader will find it hard to

believe that ... “ or “You will be surprised to learn...”

(This article violates the rule because you and your prose

are the topic.) You may, however, refer to the reader indi-

rectly in imperative, “you-understood” sentences: “Con-

sider, first, the results for women.” “Note particularly the

difference between the means in Table 1.”

In some contexts, you can use “we” to refer collec-

tively to yourself and your readers: “We can see in Table

1 that most of the tears...” The Publication Manual, how-

ever, emphasizes that the referent of “we” must be unam-

biguous; for example, copy editors will object to the sen-

tence “In everyday life, of course, we tend to overesti-

mate...” because it is not clear just who is meant by “we.”

They will accept “In everyday life, of course, we humans

tend to overestimate...” or “In everyday life, of course,

human decision makers often make errors; for example,

we tend to overestimate...”

Tense

Use the past or present perfect tense when reporting

the previous research of others (“Bandura reported...” or

“Hardin has reported…”) and past tense when reporting

how you conducted your study (“Observers were posted

behind...”) and specific past behaviors of your participants

(“Two of the men talked...”). Use the present tense for

results currently in front of the reader (“As Table 2

shows, the negative film is more effective ...”) and for

conclusions that are more general than the specific results

(“Positive emotions, then, are more easily expressed

when...”).

Avoid Language Bias

Like most publishers, the APA now has extensive

guidelines for language that refers to individuals or

groups. If your article requires you to discuss any of the

groups mentioned in this section, you should probably

consult the detailed advice in the Publication Manual

(APA, 2001, pp. 61-76)

Research Participants. One distinctive group of peo-

ple who appear in our journal articles are those whom we

study. It is no longer considered appropriate to objectify

them by calling them subjects. Instead use descriptive

terms that either identify them more specifically or that

acknowledge their roles as partners in the research proc-

ess, such as college students, children, individuals, par-

ticipants, interviewees, or respondents. You may still use

the terms subjects, subject variables, and subject sample

when discussing statistics or (at least for now) when refer-

ring to non-human participants.

Sex and Gender. The issue of language bias comes up

most frequently with regard to sex or gender, and the

most awkward problems arise from the use of masculine

nouns and pronouns when the content refers to both sexes.

The generic use of man, he, his, and him to refer to both

sexes is not only misleading in many instances, but re-

search shows that readers think of male persons when

these forms are used (Martyna, 1978). Sometimes the

results are not only sexist, but humorous in their naive

androcentrism: “Man’s vital needs include food, water,

and access to females” (Quoted in Martyna, 1978).

In most contexts, the simplest alternative is the use of

the plural. Instead of writing, “The individual who dis-

plays prejudice in his personal relations...,” write “Indi-

viduals who display prejudice in their personal relations

are ...” Sometimes the pronoun can simply be dropped or

replaced by a sex-neutral article (the, a, or an). Instead of

writing, “The researcher must avoid letting his precon-

ceptions bias his interpretation of results,” you can write,

“The researcher must avoid letting preconceptions bias

the interpretation of results.”

If it is stylistically important to focus on the single

individual, the use of “he or she,” “him or her,” and so

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 15

forth is acceptable but clumsy if used often. Alternating

he and she is both confusing and distracting. Similarly,

alternatives like he/she or s/he are unpronounceable and

grate on the eye. Do not use them.

You may find it instructive to review how I have

dealt with the pronoun problem in this article. In particu-

lar, note the many references to the “reader” or “readers.”

Sometimes the plural worked fine (e.g., “Don’t plunge

readers into the middle of your problem. Take the time to

lead them...”), but in other instances the imagery of the

sentence required the stylistic use of the singular (e.g.,

“Lead the reader by the hand through a table...”). In these

cases, I have tried to minimize using the awkward “he or

she” construction.

Stylistic matters aside, however, you must be accu-

rate in your use of pronouns when you describe your re-

search or that of others. Readers must be explicitly told

the sex of experimenters, observers, and participants.

When referring to males, use male pronouns; when refer-

ring to females use female pronouns. (See, for example,

the earlier description of the Festinger-Carlsmith study,

which used male participants.) Under no circumstances

should you omit or hide sex identity in a misguided at-

tempt to be unbiased.

The problems of gender reference become easier

when we move away from pronouns. Words like man and

mankind are easily replaced by terms like people and hu-

manity. Instead of manning projects, we can staff them.

The federal government has already desexed occupational

titles so that we have letter carriers rather than mailmen;

in private industry we have flight attendants rather than

stewardesses. And in life, children need nurturing or par-

enting, not just mothering. In all these cases, you will find

it easy to discover the appropriate sex-neutral term if you

think of the activity rather than the person doing it.

Next, watch out for plain old stereotyping. The

author who asserts that “research scientists often neglect

their wives” fails to acknowledge that women as well as

men are research scientists. If the author meant specifi-

cally male research scientists, he (she?) should have said

so. Do not talk about ambitious men and aggressive

women or cautious men and timid women if the use of

different adjectives denotes not different behaviors on the

part of men and women but your stereotyped interpreta-

tion of those behaviors. Do not make stereotyped as-

sumptions about marital sex-roles by saying that “The

client’s husband lets her teach part-time” if all you know

is that the client teaches part-time. If the bias is not yours

but someone else’s, let the writing make that clear: “The

client’s husband ‘lets’ her teach part-time.” “The husband

says he ‘lets’ the client teach part-time.” “The client says

her husband lets her teach part-time.” “The client says

sarcastically that her husband ‘lets’ her teach part-time.”

The client and her husband are allowed to say such things.

You are not.

Finally, select examples with care. Beware of your

assumptions about the sex of doctors, homemakers,

nurses, and so forth. Why not: “The athlete who believes

in her ability to succeed...”? Let our writing promote the

view that woman’s vital needs are the same as man’s:

food, water, and access to equality.

Racial and Ethnic Identity. Preferences for names re-

ferring to racial and ethnic groups change over time. For

example, African American and Black are currently ac-

ceptable terms, whereas Negro and Afro-American are

now obsolete. Similarly, Asian and Asian American are

currently acceptable designations, but Oriental is not. As

these examples illustrate, hyphens should not be used in

multiword designations, and terms such as Black and

White are considered proper nouns and should be capital-

ized.

Depending on their historical countries of origin, in-

dividuals may prefer to be called Hispanic, Latino, or

Chicano (Latina and Chicana for women). American In-

dian and Native American are both accepted terms for

referring to indigenous people of North America; but,

technically, only the latter category includes Hawaiians

and Samoans. Native peoples of northern Canada, Alaska,

eastern Siberia, and Greenland may prefer Inuk (plural,

Inuit) to Eskimo. Alaska Natives include many groups in

addition to Eskimos. It is often relevant to be more spe-

cific in describing your participants. For example, it may

be pertinent to know that they were Cuban, not just His-

panic; Chinese, Vietnamese, or Korean, not just Asian.

If you are uncertain about how to describe your re-

search participants, ask them how they prefer to be identi-

fied.

Sexual Orientation. Like terms referring to racial and

ethnic identity, terms referring to sexual orientation also

change over time. For example, the term sexual orienta-

tion itself is now preferred to the older sexual prefer-

ence—which implies a temporary free choice rather than

an enduring disposition. Although terms such as homo-

sexual and homosexuality are still technically correct and

may be used in phrases such as “a homosexual orienta-

tion” or “more Americans now accept homosexuality,”

they should be avoided when referring to individuals or

groups. Instead of referring to homosexuals or bisexuals,

use lesbians, gay men, or bisexual men and women. In

some contexts, the word gay can be used to include both

men and women (e. g., “the gay rights movement”), but

when referring to individuals or groups, retain the dis-

tinction between gay men and lesbians.

Sexual orientation is not the same as sexual behavior.

Not everyone who engages in a sexual act with a person

of the same sex should be considered gay or lesbian, and

hence you should not use the terms homosexual behavior

or heterosexual behavior. Instead, describe specific in-

stances of sexual behavior using terms such as male-male,

female-female, male-female, or same-gender sexual be-

havior.

Note the use of the word gender in the previous sen-

tence. Although there are differences in usage across and

within disciplines, the term sex is usually considered to

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 16

refer to biology; thus male and female are terms referring

to sex. In contrast, gender usually refers to the cultural

interpretation or elaboration of sex; thus masculine and

feminine are terms referring to gender. This is not a hard

and fast rule, however. For example, because the term sex

can be confused with sexual behavior, the term same-

gender sexual behavior was used in the previous para-

graph even though it refers to a sexual interaction be-

tween two people of the same biological sex. The fol-

lowing example from the Publication Manual also illus-

trates the use of gender in a context where the term sex

might be confusing: “In accounting for attitudes toward

the bill, sexual orientation rather than gender accounted

for most of the variance. Most gay men and lesbians were

for the proposal; most heterosexual men and women were

against it (APA, 2001, p. 63).”

Disabilities. When referring to individuals with dis-

abilities, maintain their integrity as individuals and human

beings by avoiding language that equates them with their

conditions. Don’t use nouns such as neurotics, schizo-

phrenics, manic-depressives, the mentally retarded, or

even the disabled. Also avoid terms that imply victimiza-

tion (e.g., “suffers from schizophrenia,” “AIDS victim”)

or that can be interpreted as a slur (e.g., cripple). In gen-

eral, the preferred forms of description are “person with

_______” or “person living with ______” or “person who

has________.” Challenged and special are often consid-

ered euphemistic and should be used only if preferred by

those who participate in your study.

There is one exception to these guidelines: the Deaf.

(Note the capital “D.”) Although some individuals with

reduced hearing may find the term hearing impaired ac-

ceptable, many Deaf individuals do not. They regard

themselves as members of a distinctive linguistic culture

that communicates in a manual (sign) language. Accord-

ingly, they take pride in referring to themselves as Deaf

and do not regard themselves as impaired or disabled. Do

not use the terms hard of hearing or deaf mute to describe

them. If your study involved Deaf participants, ask them

how they prefer to be described.

Common Errors of Grammar and Usage

The following errors seem to me to be the most fre-

quent in journal writing (listed alphabetically):

Compared with versus Compared to. Similar orders

of things are compared with one another; different orders

of things are compared to one another: “Let me not com-

pare thee with previous lovers I have had; rather, let me

compare thee to a summer’s day.” “Mischel’s articles are

often compared with Bandura’s articles; Bem’s articles

are often compared to Mozart’s sonatas.”

Data. The word data is plural: “Analyze those data

thoroughly.”

Different from versus Different than. The first is cor-

rect, the second, incorrect (although, alas for us purists,

very common and gaining respectability). The confusion

arises because than correctly follows comparative adjec-

tives. Thus you are correct to suppose that life is more

than psychology, that living a good life is harder in many

respects than writing a good article, and that living well

requires broader skills than does writing well. Just re-

member that life is different from psychology, that living

a good life is different in many respects from writing a

good article, and that living well requires skills different

from those required for writing well.

Since versus Because. Since means “after that.” It

should not be used as a substitute for because if there is

any ambiguity of interpretation. Wrong (but at least not

ambiguous): “Since the study of motivation is a high and

hazardous undertaking, I wish fewer people would med-

dle with it.” Better: “Because the study of motivation is a

high and hazardous undertaking, I wish fewer people

would meddle with it.” Ambiguous: “Since I read Mon-

taigne, I have been tempted to abandon the study of moti-

vation.” This last case is correct if the writer is using since

in the temporal sense: “Ever since reading Montaigne, I

have been tempted ...” It is incorrect if the writer means

because.

That versus Which. That clauses (called restrictive)

are essential to the meaning of the sentence; which

clauses (called nonrestrictive) merely add additional in-

formation. The following example illustrates the correct

use of both words: “Dissonance theory, which has re-

ceived major attention, is one of the theories that postu-

lates a motivational process. Thus, if a person holds two

cognitions that are inconsistent...” Most which’s in jour-

nal writing are incorrect. You should go on a which hunt

in your own manuscripts and turn most of them into

that’s.

While versus Although, But, Whereas. While means

“at the same time” and in most cases cannot substitute for

these other words. Wrong: “While inferential statistics are

important, descriptive statistics are the heart of your nar-

rative.” Right: “Although inferential statistics are impor-

tant, descriptive statistics are the heart of your narrative.”

Or, “Inferential statistics are important, but descriptive

statistics are the heart of your narrative.” Wrong: “While I

like personality traits, Mischel prefers a social learning

approach.” Right: “Whereas I like personality traits,

Mischel prefers a social learning approach.” On the other

hand, the following usage is correct: “While I like person-

ality traits, I find merit in Mischel’s social learning ap-

proach.” This can be seen by substituting “at the same

time” for “while”: “I like personality traits; at the same

time, I find merit in Mischel’s social learning approach.”

Publishing Your Article

Long ago and far away, a journal editor allegedly ac-

cepted a manuscript that required no revisions. I believe

the author was William James. In other words, if your

article is provisionally accepted for publication “pending

revisions in accord with the reviewers’ comments,” you

should be deliriously happy. Publication is now virtually

Writing the Empirical Journal Article 17

under your control. If your article is rejected but you are

invited to resubmit a revised version, you should still be

happy—if not deliriously so—because you still have a

reasonable shot at getting it published.

But this is the point at which many authors give up.

As one former editor noted,

in my experience as an associate editor, I thought a

good deal of variance in predicting eventual publica-

tion came from this phase of the process. Authors are

often discouraged by negative feedback and miss the

essential positive fact that they have been asked to re-

vise! They may never resubmit at all, or may let an in-

ordinate amount of time pass before they do (during

which editors and reviewers become unavailable, lose

the thread of the project, and so forth). An opposite

problem is that some authors become defensive and

combative, and refuse to make needed changes for no

reason.

So do not give up at this point. Feel free to complain

to your colleagues or rail at your poodle because the stu-

pid reviewers failed to read your manuscript correctly.

But then turn to the task of revising your manuscript with

a dispassionate, problem-solving approach. First, pay spe-

cial attention to criticisms or suggestions made by more

than one reviewer or highlighted by the editor in the cover

letter. These must be addressed in your revision—even if

not in exactly the way the editor or reviewers suggest.

Second, look carefully at each of the reviewers’ mis-

readings. I argued earlier that whenever readers of a

manuscript find something unclear, they are right; by

definition, the writing is unclear. The problem is that

readers themselves do not always recognize or identify

the unclarities explicitly. Instead, they misunderstand

what you have written and then make a criticism or offer

a suggestion that makes no sense. In other words, you

should also interpret reviewers’ misreadings as signals

that your writing is unclear.

Think of your manuscript as a pilot experiment in

which the pilot participants (reviewers) did not under-

stand the instructions you gave them. Analyze the reasons

for their misunderstanding and then rewrite the problem-

atic sections so that subsequent readers will not be simi-

larly misled. Compared with the average journal reader,

reviewers are almost always more knowledgeable about

your topic, more experienced in writing manuscripts

themselves, and more conscientious about reading your

article. If they did not understand, neither will that aver-

age reader.

Third, when you send in your revised manuscript, tell

the editor in a cover letter how you have responded to

each of the criticisms or suggestions made by the review-

ers. If you have decided not to adopt a particular sugges-

tion, state your reasons, perhaps pointing out how you

remedied the problem in some alternative way.

Here are some fictitious examples of cover-letter re-

sponses that also illustrate ways of responding to certain

kinds of criticisms and suggestions within the revision

itself.

1. Wrong: “I have left the section on the animal

studies unchanged. If Reviewers A and C can’t even agree

on whether the animal studies are relevant, I must be do-

ing something right.”

Right: “You will recall that Reviewer A thought

that the animal studies should be described more fully,

whereas Reviewer C thought they should be omitted. A

biopsychologist in my department agreed with Reviewer

C that the animal studies are not really valid analogs of

the human studies. So I have dropped them from the text

but cited Snarkle’s review of them in an explanatory foot-

note on page 26.”

2. Wrong: “Reviewer A is obviously Deborah Har-

din, who has never liked me or my work. If she really

thinks that behavioral principles solve all the problems of

obsessive-compulsive disorders, then let her write her

own article. Mine is about the cognitive processes in-

volved.”

Right: “As the critical remarks by Reviewer A in-

dicate, this is a contentious area, with different theorists

staking out strong positions. Apparently I did not make it

clear that my article was intended only to cover the cog-

nitive processes involved in obsessive-compulsive disor-

ders and not to engage the debate between cognitive and

behavioral approaches. To clarify this, I have now in-

cluded the word ‘cognitive’ in both the title and abstract,

taken note of the debate in my introduction, and stated

explicitly that the article will not undertake a comparative

review of the two approaches. I hope this is satisfactory.”

3. Right: “You will recall that two of the reviewers

questioned the validity of the analysis of variance, with

Reviewer B suggesting that I use multiple regression in-

stead. I agree with their reservations regarding the

ANOVA but believe that a multiple regression analysis is

equally problematic because it makes the same assump-

tions about the underlying distributions. So, I have re-

tained the ANOVA, but summarized the results of a non-

parametric analysis, which yields the same conclusions. If

you think it preferable, I could simply substitute this non-

parametric analysis for the original ANOVA, although it

will be less familiar to the journal’s readers.”

Above all, remember that the editor is your ally in

trying to shape a manuscript that will be a credit both to

you and the journal. So, cooperate in the effort to turn

your sow’s ear into a vinyl purse. Be civil and make nice.

You may not live longer, but you will publish more.

References

American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication

manual of the American Psychological Association

(5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

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Bem, D. J. (1995) Writing a review article for Psycho-

logical Bulletin. Psychological Bulletin, 118, 172-

177.

Bem, D. J. & Allen, A. (1974). Predicting some of the

people some of the time: The search for cross-

situational consistencies in behavior. Psychological

Review, 81, 506-520.

Bem, S. L. (1985). Androgyny and gender schema theory:

A conceptual and empirical integration. In T. B. Son-

deregger (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation

1984: The psychology of gender. Lincoln: University

of Nebraska Press.

Festinger, L. A. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Festinger, L. & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive conse-

quences of forced compliance. Journal of Personality

and Social Psychology, 58, 203-210.

Martyna, W. (1978). What does “He” mean? Journal of

Communication, 28, 131-138.

de Montaigne, M. (1943). Of the inconsistency of our

actions. In D. M. Frame (Trans.), Selected essays,

translated and with introduction and notes by Donald

M. Frame (pp. 119-126). Roslyn, NY: Walter J.

Black. (Original work published 1580)

Strunk, W., Jr., & White, E. B. (2000). The elements of

style (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.