academic-writing-skills

The saved excerpt is a snapshot from review. The external source remains the complete and most current version.

---
name: academic-writing-skills
description: Plan, outline, draft, review, revise, or proofread academic manuscripts, journal articles, theses, conference papers, abstracts, supplementary materials, and submission packages across disciplines and study designs. Use for extended-outline development, section or paragraph drafting, developmental editing, top-to-bottom and bottom-up integrity checks, reviewer-style revision, method and evidence alignment, terminology control, repetition and flow review, observable stock or AI-like prose patterns, citation consistency, natural scholarly prose, claim-scope control, cross-file synchronization, change-impact review, or final submission readiness.
---

# Academic Writing Skills

## Governing Principle

Preserve the authors' evidence, intended meaning, and locked decisions while making the scholarly argument clear, reproducible, internally consistent, and no stronger than the evidence permits. Never invent results, mechanisms, citations, metadata, analyses, or field requirements.

Treat a manuscript as an evolving evidence system, not as isolated prose. Follow the author's writing sequence, but re-open earlier sections whenever later evidence changes them.

## Route the Task

First identify:

- requested action: plan, draft, review, revise, proofread, or certify readiness
- artifact scope: passage, section, full manuscript, supplement, or submission package
- manuscript archetype and study design
- lifecycle stage and review maturity
- authoritative sources, active files, and historical references
- user-locked wording, facts, terminology, and decisions
- whether editing is authorized or the task is diagnosis only

Use **lightweight mode** for a passage, isolated section, or bounded language edit. Use **managed-project mode** for a full manuscript, repeated revision, multiple companion files, material scientific changes, or any submission-ready request. Lightweight mode narrows the context and impact scan; it does not waive the exact-candidate gate below.

In managed-project mode, read [state-and-authority.md](references/state-and-authority.md) and use the project-state template. Initialize it with `scripts/init_manuscript_state.py` when no equivalent project record exists. Do not create project state for a simple one-off edit.

## Follow the Manuscript Lifecycle

Map the work to this lifecycle without forcing the final article order to equal the writing order:

1. establish project authority, manuscript archetype, and intended venue
2. develop the extended outline, Introduction, gap, questions, and planned contribution
3. develop study context, data, theory, and Methods
4. build Results from verified analyses, figures, tables, or source evidence
5. develop Discussion, alternatives, implications, limitations, and future work
6. synthesize the Conclusion from the stabilized evidence map
7. rebuild the title, Abstract, highlights, and summaries from the current manuscript
8. reconcile references, supplements, metadata, and submission files
9. pass release checks on the exact deliverables

At every stage, run both directions of alignment:

- **top-down:** purpose or gap → question or objective → method → expected evidence
- **bottom-up:** source evidence → result → interpretation → contribution and summary claim

Read [lifecycle-and-routing.md](references/lifecycle-and-routing.md) for stage gates, review maturity, non-IMRAD routing, and change-impact classes.

## Draft from Explicit Writing Contracts

Before drafting an outline, section, or paragraph, identify its reader function, central claim or question, authorized evidence, inference limit, and link to adjacent material. For a paragraph, use this compact contract:

1. function: what the paragraph must accomplish
2. claim: the narrowest defensible main point
3. evidence: the source, result, citation, or reasoning that supports it
4. development: how the evidence is explained without adding a mechanism
5. bridge: what relation leads int