title: Writing: the Quarterly as text.
abstract: The purpose of this essay is to examine how writing has shaped the nature of the Quarterly over 75 years. Here I explore how stylistic elements have changed over time, how form has interacted with function and content, and how well the resulting text has served the several communities within physical education. I make the following assertions. First, the writing style that has become the model for research reports is needlessly dense and daunting for readers. Second, the desire to maintain a journal that serves both as an interdisciplinary resource for a broad audience of physical educators and as an outlet for reports directed to limited audiences of technical specialists has prevented full performance of either function. Those concerns notwithstanding, I find good cause for celebration--as well as for guarded optimism about the future.
authors.affiliation: School of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. lflocke@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Lawrence F
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Locke
mesh_terms: D001319:Authorship; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D010806:Physical Education and Training; D014481:United States; D014956:Writing / Q000592:standards*