Writing Conventions for Sociology
The literature review argues with theory, not just about studies
Sociology reviews are organized by theoretical position — what a perspective predicts, where it fails, what your work adds. A chronological march through recent papers reads as a coursework summary rather than a contribution.
ASA style is author–date and close to APA, but not identical
The American Sociological Association style uses author–date in-text citations and a “References” list, with its own rules for capitalization and note placement. If you draft in APA the shape is close enough to convert cleanly; the details still need a manual pass against the ASA guide.
Reflexivity is a methods obligation in qualitative work
Ethnographers and interviewers write about access, rapport, and the effect of their own presence on what people said and did. This belongs in the methods as an analytic account of the fieldwork, not as an apology tacked onto the limitations.
Thick description earns its length
Fieldwork writing reconstructs a scene closely enough that a reader can see how you got from observation to interpretation. The discipline tolerates long descriptive passages precisely because the analysis has to be visible inside them.
Quantitative results live in tables, and the prose interprets them
Regression output goes in a numbered table with standard errors and model fit; the text explains what a coefficient means substantively rather than restating the number. Reporting the size of an effect in real-world units is what separates an interpretation from a readout.
Causal claims from observational data are hedged deliberately
With survey and administrative data you write about associations, selection, and the mechanisms you can and cannot rule out. When a paper does claim identification, the design that licenses the claim is argued explicitly rather than implied.
