Friday Fun: An Insider's Guide To Psychology Prose

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I have been writing empirical articles for a little while now, and one of things I have come to notice is that there is a very specific style that social psychologists develop in their articles. It's not a style that is reflected in other disciplines of science or even in other realms of psychology. Nor is this style represented in popular guides to academic writing (e.g., Gullickson, 1997) or in the official publication manual of the American Psychological Association.

 In today's Friday Fun post I thought that it might be fun to examine these stylistic techniques to (1) give you, as a consumer of science research, a better understanding of the articles you read, and (2) illustrate that sometimes journal article writing actually can have a second meaning. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on other patterns in science writing covered here or not. I've also included example quotes from my own writing!

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