Econ Humanizer Plus
Download econ-humanizer-plus.zip
Barrios Skills — John Barrios’s curated workflow for economists and accountants. Prioritize reproducible empirical work, clear identification language, and journal-ready output.
Econ Humanizer Plus
Use alongside econ-humanizer — not instead of it. The original handles the core Cochrane-style transforms (active voice, short sentences, plain words, concrete claims). This skill adds the specific lists and micro-rules below.
1. PHRASES TO DELETE ON SIGHT
Search for these and cut them. In most cases the paragraph is stronger with them removed entirely; occasionally the meaning needs to be rewritten.
Meta-prose / throat-clearing: - “It should be noted that…” - “It is worth noting that…” - “It is important to note that…” - “It is easy to show that…” - “A comment is in order.” - “In other words…” - “As mentioned above…” - “As we will see…”
Literature-review padding: - “An important question in the literature is…” - “This paper contributes to the literature by…” - “The literature has long been interested in…” - “The literature lacks a model of…”
Methods padding: - “We investigate/examine/explore the relationship between X and Y.” - “We perform/conduct/carry out a regression of Y on X.” - “Results are reported in Table X.” (tables speak for themselves if captioned well)
Roadmap: - “The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.” (Keep the roadmap content, drop this sentence.)
“That”-deletion heuristic: Search for “that” and try deleting the preceding clause. Often the sentence tightens: “The results show that X increases Y” → “X increases Y.”
2. BANNED AI WORDS
These are tells. A single use is fine; repeated use (>1 per section) signals AI prose.
Never use in academic econ prose: - “delve”, “delve into” - “landscape” (as in “the economic landscape”) - “multifaceted” - “notably” (almost always deletable) - “leverage” as a verb (use “use” or “exploit”) - “robust” outside its statistical meaning (don’t say “robust findings” — say “strong” or just report the evidence) - “pivotal” - “groundbreaking” - “shed light on” - “pave the way” - “comprehensive” (almost always hollow) - “furthermore” (use a period + new sentence) - “utilize” (use “use”) - “crucial” (usually unsupported; be concrete about why it matters) - “underscore” / “underscores”
Use sparingly, with specific content: - “important” — only when you say why - “significant” — reserve for the statistical meaning; use “large” for economic significance - “interesting” — delete; show, don’t tell
3. SENTENCE LENGTH VARIATION
AI prose trends toward uniform medium-length sentences. Real academic writing mixes:
- Short (8-12 words): for punch, for the finding, for the transition.
- Medium (13-20 words): most sentences.
- Long (20-30 words): for setup, for a qualified claim, for a list.
Check: read three consecutive sentences aloud. If they all feel the same length, break one in half or combine two with a semicolon.
4. EM-DASHES AND PARENTHETICALS ARE ALLOWED (Even Encouraged)
Over-sanitization is itself an AI tell. Real academics use: - Em-dashes for qualifications and asides: “The effect — small but precisely estimated — survives every robustness check.” - Parentheticals for side notes: “Workers (particularly those in manufacturing) respond strongly.” - Semicolons for paired clauses: “The coefficient is positive; the magnitude is modest.”
Do NOT strip all of these in the name of “cleaning up.” A paragraph with zero em-dashes and zero parentheticals reads robotic.
5. HEDGING — USE IT
AI writing over-asserts. Real empirical work hedges where warranted:
- “This likely reflects…”
- “One interpretation is…”
- “A plausible explanation is…”
- “The evidence is consistent with [A] but does not rule out [B].”
- “We cannot distinguish between [A] and [B] with these data.”
But: do not hedge the main finding itself in the abstract or introduction. Hedge interpretations, not results.
6. FIELD VOCABULARY — USE IT NATURALLY
Generic phrasing is a tell. Use the actual vocabulary of the subfield:
- Labor: extensive margin, intensive margin, job ladder, reservation wage, LATE, compliers
- IO / trade: pass-through, markup, market power, demand elasticity, MRPL, gravity, multilateral resistance
- Public / health: treatment on treated, ITT, take-up, compliance, salience, framing
- Finance: abnormal returns, CAR/BHAR, cross-section, factor loadings, Fama-MacBeth, winsorize
- Accounting: discretionary accruals, earnings management, going concern, conservatism, timely loss recognition
- Macro: impulse response, steady state, shock, wedge, log-linearization, calibration
If the draft says “the effect of the policy” where “pass-through” is the right word, change it.
7. NAME SPECIFIC INSTITUTIONS
Generic placeholders are AI tells. Replace:
- “the dataset” → “the Current Population Survey” / “Compustat” / “the HRS”
- “the agency” → “the EPA” / “the FDIC”
- “the policy” → “the 2010 minimum-wage increase in Washington State”
- “the country” / “the economy” → “the United States” / “the German economy”
8. MICRO-RULES
Clothe naked “this”
Never let “this” stand alone as a subject. Add the noun: - ✗ “This shows that wages rose.” - ✓ “This regression shows that wages rose.” - ✓ “This pattern reflects…”
“Where” vs. “in which”
- “Where” = physical place. “In California, where wages rose…”
- “In which” = abstract / model / conditions. “Models in which consumers have shocks…” NOT “models where consumers have shocks.”
Compound-modifier hyphenation
Before a noun: hyphenate multi-word modifiers. - “risk-free rate”, “after-tax income”, “above-median firms”, “two-period model” - BUT NOT when the first word is an -ly adverb: “randomly assigned treatment” (no hyphen), “statistically significant result” (no hyphen).
Name every Greek letter
Don’t leave σ or γ unexplained. On first use: - “the elasticity of substitution, σ, equals 3” - “the discount factor β ∈ (0, 1)” Then remind the reader on re-use in a distant section.
No double adjectives on your own work
- ✗ “very novel”, “truly striking”, “highly significant” (unless quoting a test)
- ✓ Just state the magnitude and let the reader judge.
No self-adjectives at all
Don’t tell the reader your results are “striking”, “important”, “remarkable”, “surprising”. Report the finding; the reader decides.
9. PARAGRAPH RHYTHM CHECK
Before finalizing a paragraph, verify: - Opens with a claim (a topic sentence), not a citation. - Has one idea — if it has two, split it. - Closes with a claim or transition, not a citation dump. - Contains at least one concrete datum, magnitude, or institution (unless it’s a pure theory paragraph).
11. HOW THIS SKILL DIFFERS FROM econ-humanizer
| Concern | econ-humanizer |
econ-humanizer-plus |
|---|---|---|
| Active voice | ✓ | — |
| Plain words | ✓ | — |
| Specific phrase-deletion list | — | §1 |
| Specific banned AI words | — | §2 |
| Sentence-length variation | — | §3 |
| Em-dash / parenthetical permission | — | §4 |
| Hedging guidance | — | §5 |
| Field vocabulary | — | §6 |
| Specific institutions | — | §7 |
| “Where” vs. “in which” | — | §8 |
| Compound-modifier hyphens | — | §8 |
| Greek letter naming | — | §8 |
When both skills trigger, defer to econ-humanizer for top-level voice (Cochrane-style active/direct/concrete) and apply the specific rules above as a second pass.
Rules synthesized from the hanlulong/econ-writing-skill corpus: Cochrane “Writing Tips for PhD Students”, McCloskey “Economical Writing”, Shapiro “Writing Economics”, Head “Five Tips for a Perfect Introduction”, Bellemare “How to Publish in Top Journals”.