Writing Style & Craft (asq-writing-style)

When to trigger

• The theory and analysis are settled; the prose needs to reach ASQ's craft bar
• The manuscript is technically correct but flat, jargon-heavy, or hard to follow
• A process study is written in dead "variance-speak"
• Reviewers/editors praise the idea but call the writing "dense" or "unclear"

ASQ's craft bar

ASQ is known for superb writing — long-form articles with a strong narrative arc. The best ASQ papers read as compelling intellectual stories, not as lab reports; Weick's (1993, ASQ) Mann Gulch paper is the canonical example of analysis carried by narrative. The journal's guidelines treat the compelling presentation of supporting evidence as one dimension of a submission's quality (verify at journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/asq), and current editorial communications emphasize curation — selecting and shaping papers that will endure. Craft is a real evaluation criterion here, not a courtesy.

The narrative arc