Customer Reviews

AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

At long last, the 10th Edition of the AMA Manual of Style is finally available, and I am happy to say it was worth the wait. As an editor who has worked in medical journals, scientific Web sites, and an agency specializing in pharmaceutical advertising, I found the 9th edition to be, at times, a bit dated and not as easy to navigate as I would have hoped. Most of those problems have been resolved in the 10th edition, as well as the inclusion of some new information that I didn't even know I was missing until I found.

The following is a list of changes in the new edition of the style guide that I found particularly helpful and relevant, and will hopefully be a quick go-to guide when you're debating whether to buy the new version or hold fast to the 9th edition.

- The section on Correct and Preferred Usage has moved from Chapter 9 to Chapter 11 and includes a wealth of information that was not in the previous edition. There is more information about the difference between race and ethnicity and when it's relevant to include sexual orientation in a scientific manuscript.

- An extended section on electronic references (3.15, 63-72). This new info is highly relevant considering since 1998 (when the 9th edition was released) there have been a number of innovations with the Internet and a number of authors choose to use the Web as sources of information.

- The section on manuscript preparation is vastly improved and expanded (Ch 4). It includes more information on the different types of tables and figures as well as new guidelines for the use of symbols and footnotes.

- Of particular interest to journal editors, there is more information on authorship requirements, conflicts of interest, sources of funding, and copyright and permissions basics (Ch 5).

- The section on capitalization demonstrates that, not only can the AMA editors laugh at themselves, but that they're also familiar with the lyrics of Coolio (eg, There is no party like a West Coast party because a West Coast party doesn't stop. 10.3, 375). The section on capitalization also includes newer terms like iBook and eBay that are more relevant to modern writing (10.8, 380).

- In terms of grammar, some of the rules that always give editors trouble are more explicitly outlined and in more detail. There's a longer section on the use of that and which (7.2, 318), which I still have to look up occasionally. A final ruling on the health care vs healthcare debate (always 2 words, per AMA, 11.1, 395). And more specific rules on false/parenthetical plurals and sentences with compound subjects (7.8)

- A change in the use of states in references. All will use postal codes now, instead of the former abbreviations (14.5, 451-455).

- An expanded section on international currency (18.5.12, 817-819).

- The section on terminology has been expanded to include information about different specialties, including psychiatry, ophthalmology, and obstetrics (Ch 15). This section also includes a new chart with human viruses that is expanded and easier to navigate (15.14.3, 762-767).

- There is a more comprehensive copyediting section, including information on editing numerical information (21.1, 907; 23.1, 929-933).

- And finally, and most importantly for all newer medical editors and writing, there is a more informative resources guide with professional organizations aimed at scientific writers and editors as well as grammar and editing resources (25, 967-976).

As a whole, I'm very pleased with the new edition of the AMA style guide, and can't wait to incorporate the new changes into my own work.

Style manuals are written either for editors or for authors, rarely for both. The AMA manual is a text only editors could love, it serves the interests of authors mostly as an afterthought. The "Instructions for Authors" on JAMA's website presents the essential requirements of the style in a more concise format for journal articles, the vehicles of research reporting. This is also two texts in one, a text on style and a text on medical terminology and ethics, a dubious combination. Style, by its very nature, is well served by a ten-year publication cycle. It should change only very slowly. Medical terminology, on the other hand, is in a constant state of flux. Authors working in a field are well aware of the accepted nomenclature without the need to be reminded by an inevitably dated style manual. This text is written for editors at some remove from medical practice and research. This review, on the other hand, is from an author's point of view.

The last edition of the AMA manual (1997) sought to impose the metric system on clinical measures. This initiative failed. It was simply ignored in preference to the conventional measures used in clinical practice. The new AMA style requires a conventional measure to be followed by a metric conversion factor. For example, the new AMA manual is a heavy tome, the one-thousand-plus page text weighs 4.2 pounds (to convert to kilograms multiply by 0.45). This is a sensible and useful requirement. However, you need not buy the manual to get the exhaustive conversion table, it's available on the JAMA website.

The new manual also accepts the "versioning" of online documents as research references. In effect, an online clinical or research report can be changed once published, without the change being documented, and still be considered a credible reference. I find this practice wholly unacceptable, and I'm a mere anthropologist, not an MD. Corrections, retractions, revisions, errata, and so forth to print articles are documented in print. The same standard must apply to electronic documents. Those who argue that the practice of medicine is more an art or craft than a science may be right, but it is not a whimsical craft.

The text is a curmudgeon's delight. For example, the table of contents lists a section on "Measurement and Quantitation." Do they mean to say "quantification," not "quantitation?" Alas, my dictionary has no such word. Abbreviations are used for the names of journals when composing references to articles. On at least three instances, the AMA manual refers readers to different sources where the standard abbreviations can be found. None get it right. The standard reference used to be the "Index Medicus" published by the National Library of Medicine. The name has changed to the "List of Journals Index by Medline" and it is available free online.

If you are sufficiently knowledgable to write authoritatively on a subject, then you are familiar with how the research community talks about it, and they have litttle regard for style guides. For example, a highly lethal virus was first identified in the American Southwest in the early 1990s. A new virus is typically named for the locale where it is discovered. This was a problem for this new hantvirus strain. It was found in the Canyon del Muerto in northeast Arizona, so named for a massacre in the 1800s. Imagine the public reaction to a new, lethal, "Canyon of Death" virus loose in their neighborhood. Thought turned to naming it the "Four Corners" virus, but the local Chamber of Commerce muttered something about tarring and feathering those responsible. It was finally christened the "sin nombre virus," Spanish for "no name." This should have been written lowercase since "sin nombre" is not a proper noun, just a phrase. But the literature soon came to capitalize it as if it were a place name, the Sin Nombre Virus (SNV). The story continues. When in the process of publishing a review paper on the hantavirus my editor changed the capitalization to lowercase in the galley proofs. This was absolutely correct according to the style guides. I sent her portions of six articles from research journals to illustrate the practice of capitalization that had taken hold in the literature. To lowercase the virus name would have been stylistically correct, but it would have discredited the paper, suggesting the author was not in touch with the literature. It was capitalized in the published article. The moral? Use style guides warily when it comes to nomenclature.

The AMA's lead editor makes this charming observation in her preface: "I never cease to be amazed by the general inability of physicians, other health professionals, and scientists to communicate through the written word. Their scholarly and creative ideas and insightful data interpretation of them seem to get lost in the translation from brain to page" (p. v). The quality of medical writing has dramatically improved since a young Dr. Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, tv's ER) wrote in the pages of the New England Journal that "medical writing is bad, but its functions are perfectly understandable as a display of scientific [editorial?] profundity, not as an attempt to communicate experience" (December 11, 1975;293:1257-1259). Apparently this malaise, and foot-in-mouth disease to boot, now afflicts the AMA's editors.

Curmudgeoning aside, is the 1000-page text usable? AMA style generally dispenses with periods after abbreviations, but if the abbreviation for "saint" is used in a name, as in William St. James, a period is required. If the abbreviation is used with a city in a reference, as in St Louis, no period is needed. Is this the answer to a question you would ever think to ask? What other pitfalls and traps lurk in this massive text? Instructions for the general use of abbreviations are found near pages 450 and 500; those for the use of colons are on pages 34 and 241; and those for numbers are on pages 795 or 850. The text may be well organized for editors, but if you are looking for guidance on the most common problems confronted by a writer, you have a monumental task before you. While there is some useful information for authors in the first 60-80 pages, especially on references, this a tedious volume to work through. It is a reference, not a guide. A reference demands that you know what questions to ask. A guide answers the questions you didn't think to ask. As an author, I need a style guide.

I'm a medical copy editor so this book is an essential reference in my work. The tenth edition presents up-to-date information in, as usual, a somewhat difficult format---the categories and placement of topics therein don't always seem as user-friendly as they might be.
The otherwise excellent chapter "Correct and Preferred Usage" exemplifies the fatal flaw of this manual (if indeed it has one): People who tend to get this stuff wrong typically won't know to look for (or where to look for) help, if only because they don't recognize issues as matters of "usage"---for example, test results, not tests, are negative, but I invariably have to fix this in the books I edit, so obviously it's not getting through to authors, at least some of whom presumably use this manual. (Of course, it's great to have these rules and rulings, but I'm the copy editor so I already know them.)
Also, I don't always agree that AMA style is the best. Reference style, for example, seems too detailed and fussy without any real benefit---six author names? Come on, please.
An odd and illogical choice, to my mind, is use of numbers in terms like "3-dimensional," instead of "three-dimensional." Typically, in medical/scientific discussions using this term, consideration of the number of dimensions isn't the point; it's just three versus two (a descriptive designation, not a measurement), and if a shorter form is needed because of frequent use, then "3D" is the obvious solution.
Another reviewer mentions the lack of consistency in use of periods: "Susan St. James" has a period; "St Louis, MO" does not.
Finally, the index should be more detailed---sometimes it's hard to guess the main entry for whatever it is I'm looking for.
However, the material on genetics is great to have, as are the updates on references material to include electronic sources.

Having worked in the pharmaceutical and biopharm industries for the past 15 years as a contract writer and editor, this manual is THE ONLY style guide for these industries. All of the large pharmaceutical companies use their own internal style guides, but without exception, each derives their respective manual from the AMA (with instructions to consult the AMA for "topics not covered" within their own style guide). The AMA Manual of Style doesn't make you a better writer, and it doesn't teach you how to diagram sentences -- it is a reference guide. If you need to know how hyphens should be handled with compound adjectives, then check with the AMA... you'll find a very robust answer with many examples provided to assist you.

If you can find your answer.

This is historically the greatest problem of the AMA Manual of Style. As others have remarked, locating your item(s) of interest can be a bit troublesome. Most of us grew accustomed to the Index of the 8th edition, but then the 9th took a step backwards. This edition, the 10th, attempts to provide more clarity than either of its predecessors -- and I think it does -- but it's still a bit of a trick. Even the most skilled medical editor may self-herniate trying to find a quick answer in the AMA. Can you start a sentence with an abbreviation? Good luck with that one, Ace. Oh, the answer's in there, but careful reading is required to reveal it.

Still, once your sticky notes are assembled, getting around doesn't require as much effort. It's a very good Style Manual, and if you are (or are hoping to be) a medical writer for the pharmaceutical industry, it's the only one you'll be required to use.

This book was great to give all the rules and examples for citation, but I found the organization hard to use. It had that 'stereo instruction' approach that didn't seem very straight forward unless I only wanted info on how to cite one specific thing only. This is specifically a reference book, not a reading book about the art of citation. One big plus: It's very comprehensive for many different kinds of sources including proper use and citation of online resources.

As a copy editor and proofreader in the medical and pharmaceutical advertising and communications industries, this text is necessary for my work, as most of my clients use AMA style as THEIR style. However, I have found that this series of texts changes every few years simply as a money maker for the AMA. Only minute changes seem to be made from edition to edition. (I will say, however, that this edition seems to cover many more topics and issues.) In addition, it never seems to fail that what I am looking for, I can't find. The Index could use quite a bit of work. In addition, this text is quite expensive, in my humble opinion. But, as I said in the title for this brief review, this text is "A Necessary Evil."

Unless you use the online version very very frequently, don't buy the bundle. The so called bundle means a package of the book and one-year online use of the book. Besides the new part for Internet publishing, there is almost nothing new. I prefer the last version, which is much thinner.

The opening pages of the new style manual illustrate a serious problem with medical writing style. This sentence, for example, "Preparation of a scholarly manuscript requires thoughtful consideration of the topic and anticipation of the reader's needs and questions", is typical of the stuffy, pretentious, and dead style in which medical articles are usually written. What is wrong with the sentence, you ask? Nothing grammatical. But the first two words signal the ponderous style used in most academic and scientific writing. "Preparation" is a noun that should be a verbal: "Preparing". "Preparation of" indicates a long and ponderous noun phrase that contains a head noun plus an unnecessary prepositional phrase: "of a scholarly manuscript". To make the sentence parallel, the author adds two more of those bloated long and ponderous noun phrases that contain a head noun plus an unnecessary prepositional phrase: "thoughtful consideration of the topic" and "anticipation of the reader's needs and questions". What's wrong with saying it this way: "Preparing a scholarly manuscript requires thoughtfully considering the topic and anticipating the reader's needs and questions"? The original sentence is 19 words; the revised is 16 words. That reduces the word count by 15%. In a volume of 1032 pages, that means at least 1000 fewer words to read just by eliminating one verbose structure. Scientific and academic writing contains so many verbose structures that a good editor would probably be able to eliminate between 5000-8000 words in 1000 pages of text without altering the soporific third person impersonal passive style that the JAMA and Archives series editors use. To actually make the book interesting to read -- and as a medical editor for the past dozen years, I have to say that I find it useful but boring -- would require a rewrite using active verbs and a much more direct and personal style. The authors might have said "When writing your scholarly article, think deeply about the topic and anticipate your reader's needs and questions". That's 17 words, only a 10% reduction. Still, it directly addresses the reader because it uses "your". Readers generally prefer to be talked *to* rather than talked *at*: it's more personal. I believe, however, that the first admonition, "think deeply about the topic", is superfluous. Anticipating the reader's needs and questions requires the author to think deeply about the topic. That eliminates another 6 words: "When writing your scholarly article, anticipate your reader's needs and questions". That's a mere 11 words, a 42% reduction. Someone said that brevity is the soul of wit. Whoever it was was right.

With medical journal editors who seem to believe that the words in scholarly manuscripts should act on readers as sodium thiopental and its siblings act on patients under the knife, it's no wonder that scholarly manuscripts continue to be soporific. It isn't necessary for scientific articles to sound like dirges when they're read. But old habits die hard, don't they?

I've been waiting for this book since becoming a medical editor 3 years ago. It is completely updated for modern-day medical communications and now includes extensive sections with Internet-related information. I use it nearly every day and absolutely love it.

A must for any science writer. This book is concise and has helpful information.