Writing Style (mksc-writing-style)
When to trigger
- The paper buries its intuition under notation; an editor cannot grasp the contribution from the first pages
- Notation is dense, inconsistent, or introduced before motivation
- Citations/formatting are not in INFORMS style
- You are doing a final pass before submission (and the model is settled)
Lead with intuition, then formalize
Marketing Science readers are technical, but the intuition must come first. State the marketing question, the mechanism, and the headline counterfactual in words before the model appears. Each major result should be previewed in plain language ("intuitively, because firms re-optimize prices, …") and only then proven. Notation is a tool for precision, not a substitute for an argument.
- Introduce notation just-in-time, near where it is used; keep a consistent, minimal symbol set; consider a notation table for heavy models.
- For analytical results, state the proposition in words, give the economic intuition, then the formal claim; push long proofs to an appendix.
- For structural work, motivate each modeling assumption by the marketing institution it captures.
INFORMS house style
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Citations: author-year, e.g., (Norman 1977) or Norman (1977); reference list alphabetical by author in INFORMS reference style.
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Format: double-spaced, single column, 11- or 12-point font, one-inch margins; prepared in MS Word or LaTeX (INFORMS LaTeX style files and Style-Instructions.pdf on the Author Portal); uploaded as Word or PDF.
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Abstract: not more than 200 words, on the first page; 3–6 keywords describing the theoretical and methodological orientation.
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Length discipline: regular articles have no fixed cap but are expected to be written succinctly; Frontiers is a strict 6,000-word total cap (including references, tables, graphs, appendices), so for Frontiers, ruthlessly cut and push detail online.
- Keep the manuscript blinded for double-anonymous review — no self-identifying phrasing.
Checklist
Anti-patterns
- Opening with a wall of notation and no intuition.
- Re-defining symbols or carrying unused notation.
- Numbered/footnote-style citations instead of INFORMS author-year.
- Over-length Frontiers submissions that will be returned.
Style execution pass for Marketing Science
Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the demand/supply mechanism, fit evidence, and counterfactual decision margin; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: quantitative marketing reviewers who read the model through the managerial counterfactual it makes possible.
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Do the pass: Rewrite the first two pages so each paragraph starts from the venue-level claim, not from chronology or method inventory; preserve exact source-map limits and move technical overflow to appendix or supplement.
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Return a ledger: give
claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
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Sibling guard: compare against Journal of Marketing Research for empirical marketing breadth, Management Science for wider OR/MS reach, Quantitative Marketing and Economics for specialist modeling; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
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Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until the pack's
resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for volatile rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.
Output format
【Intuition-first】question/mechanism/counterfactual stated up front?
【Notation】minimal, consistent, just-in-time?
【Citations/format】INFORMS author-year; double-spaced 11–12pt; Word/LaTeX
【Abstract/keywords】≤200 words; 3–6 keywords
【Length】regular succinct / Frontiers ≤6,000 words total
【Blinding】intact?
【Next step】mksc-submission
