The Readability of Marketing Journals: Are Award-Winning Articles Better Written?

Alan G. Sawyer1,

1J.C. Penney Professor of Marketing, University of Florida.


Juliano Laran2,

2Doctoral candidate in Marketing, University of Florida.


Jun Xu3

3Doctoral candidate in Marketing, University of Florida.




Abstract

This is a study of the readability of articles in four marketing journals: Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of International Marketing, and Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. For each journal, the authors compare articles that have won an award with articles that have not. The authors find that award-winning articles are more readable, as measured by indexes focusing on sentence and word length, than nonwinning articles. The authors also identify and analyze other characteristics of more readable journal articles and discuss the importance of good writing.

Cited by

, , . 2010. Readability of tax court opinions. , 171-183.
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. (2009) A litotes of what you fancy: some thoughts on Stanley Hollander's writing style. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 1:1, 74-92
Online publication date: 1-Jan-2009.
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