Econ Humanizer Plus

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).

10. COAUTHORSHIP VOICE

Multi-author drafts often have style discontinuities that look AI-like because different authors (or AI at different times) wrote different sections.

• Agree on "we" vs. "I" upfront. Use the same one throughout.
• Designate a voice editor who reads end-to-end for tonal consistency.
• If one section feels different, rewrite for rhythm — don't just copy-edit words.

11. HOW THIS SKILL DIFFERS FROM econ-humanizer

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".