“Human behavior is regulated by morality, ethics, and law.” -Lundberg’s law Medical professionals delve into the deeper end of morality, ethics, and law on a regular basis. Therefore, it wouldn’t be shocking that medical writing is required to be highly specialized and sensitive. Here is a quick overview of the AMA style of writing for beginners and those who haven’t found the time to read through the heavy and slightly confusing AMA manual of style. Title: AMA recommends specific and concise titles containing key points of work, in title casing. Use the approved name of drugs and the expanded form (italicized) of the genus and species if they appear in the title. Wrong: Use of Heroin and mortality. Right: Heroin Use and Mortality Among Women in Switzerland Abstract: Owing to electronic retrieval and data dissemination, your abstract is mostly indexed and is the most read part of your article. So, you abstract must contain (1) Objectives and background; (2) Design and methods; (3) Primary findings; (4) Principal conclusions Structure: Most articles are structured using the common headings (1) Introduction; (2) Methods; (3) Results; (4) Discussion. Do not use an abbreviation as your heading or introducing an abbreviation in the heading. References: The referencing style followed by JAMA is a modification of the style required by the National Library of Medicine. In-text references: Pradhan et al reported that Apple was observed to be a healthy substitute.3 OR The effects of apple were good,3 but Apples were healthy3; bananas were healthier.4 End list references: Bachchan A, Bhavnani RS, Khan SR. Effects of sugar on insulin. Ann Intern Med. 2003;139(12):978-980. Language: No one gets any brownie points for already knowing the answer to this. The preferred language is obviously American English. Grammar: Follow the basic grammar instructions provided in our previous post (9 Edits to Save Your Paper From Bad English). In addition, don’t use double negatives, contractions, idioms, colloquialisms, slang, euphemisms, and clichés. Be mindful of misplaced modifiers, verbal phrase danglers, sentence fragments, parallel constructions, correlative conjunctions, elliptical or a series of comparisons. Split infinitives if it improves clarity. Punctuation: In American English, quotation marks are always double. Use commas to set off ie, eg, and viz. Commas are also used to set off degrees, titles, elements of addresses and dates. However, numbers above hundreds are not separated by a comma but a thin space instead. Hyphenate sparingly but hyphenate temporary compounds. Use en-dashes to denote a range outside parenthesis and a hyphen for one inside parenthesis. Word choice: Redundant words Expendable words Incomparable words Preferred terminology Abbreviations: Keep abbreviation usage to the minimal and mention the expanded form of every abbreviation at the first instance of use followed by introducing the abbreviation in parenthesis. Measurement and quantitation: The AMA requires using the SI units of measurements (in lowercase when spelled out). The percentage sign is repeated after every value. The “P” of p values is naked, capitalized, and italicized. The “0” before a decimal point for values less than 1 is omitted. Although all the rules can’t be included in a humble post, the important ones are listed above. Hope this helps you write. Happy Writing!!
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