Writing for A↬I: some guidelines
We welcome contributed posts from readers.
We’re written these guidelines to make your job as author easier. They are not hard and fast. The economics discipline advances one broken rule at a time!
A↬I aims to be chatty in style, grounded in theory and practice, and accessible to both professional economists and enthusiasts.
We are happy to post material that you’ve published elsewhere, so long as there’s a good chance our readers haven’t already read it.
A series of shorter posts is better than a single long one. (But each needs to stand alone.)
Own your analysis and opinions. Write in the 1st person (i.e. I, my, we, our) and address the reader in the 2nd person (i.e. you, your). That said, be careful with “we” and “our”. Does “we” refer to the authors, the author and reader, everyone who thinks like I do, all New Zealanders, or all humans? Best to be specific.
Avoid the passive voice; readers would rather you tell them who did what to whom, rather than having to guess.
The ideal post length is 800 to 1200 words. Posts over 2000 words are too long to be emailed. These counts are all up, including headings, footnotes & captions. For example, this post is 800 words, and this one is 1700 words.
Use subheadings frequently — a good minimum is one per screen page of text.
Econ jargon is OK, but best if you explain it for unfamiliar readers.
As appropriate to the topic, explore links to, and implications for, New Zealand.
Treat others politely and constructively. Disagreement is fine, but don’t presume you know the motivations or intentions of others.
Prefer clickable links (ideally to un-gated pages) over formal academic referencing.
Use footnotes to avoid breaking your narrative flow. Footnotes are ideal for nerdy details, digressions, and corner cases.
Illustrate your post with 2 to 5 photos, graphs or diagrams. One should be suitable for use as a listing image on the home page. (We can supply photos, if needed.)
You can submit a Word file, or use the Substack editor to edit the posts directly. (For the latter, we’ll need to set you up as a guest author.)
Feel free to contact the editor to discuss your ideas for a post.
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