The Writing of Medical Papers

This little book supplies a need the filling of which will be appreciated, not only by physicians, but by all who have to do with the writing, editing or abstracting of medical literature. It is a handbook containing in brief and readily usable form the essential points to be found in general textbooks on the art of writing. It reduces these points to those especially applicable to the treatment of medical subjects, the rules have been made definite, and the whole carefully indexed. The subject matter has been arranged in two distinct parts: technical and general. Stress is laid, in the preparation of manuscripts, upon brevity, accuracy and clearness, and adherence to the accepted forms of present day usage. One of the greatest values of the book is the inclusion of certain material difficult to find elsewhere, at least in so convenient and compact a form. . Among this material are useful lists, such as those of words still italicized and of words no longer italicized, English plurals of Latin or foreign terms, words still retaining foreign plurals, adjectives with variant endings, similar words frequently confused and so misused, etc. A chapter on very useful don'ts begins "Don't always go back to the Garden of Eden and review the literature to date." The sections on punctuation, case histories, abstracts, references and revision are very suggestive. Form of manuscript, proofreading, quoted material, indexing and the copyright are discussed. A very full alphabetical list of medical journals, English and foreign, with the standard abbreviations for their titles, completes the volume.--New York Medical Journal, Volume 116