Forgive me for repeating myself: Self-plagiarism in the medical literature - Volume 21, Issue

While plagiarism of others’ work is universally condemned, authors’ reuse of their own words and data (so-called ‘self-plagiarism’) is a far more contentious issue. The recycling of one's own text, in particular, polarizes opinion: some consider it…

How to shorten a text by up to 30% and improve clarity without losing information - Volume 26, Issue

What if everything you read was up to 30% shorter and more easily understood? What if everything you wrote was up to 30% shorter and more easily understood? Would that be a skill worth developing? Would  your employer or clients notice if your work…

Can readers spot the AI impostor in healthcare writing? - Volume 32, Issue

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) writing assistants in the healthcare industry is becoming increasingly prevalent. These tools can help medical writers to generate content more quickly and efficiently, but they also raise concerns about the…

Writing narrative style literature reviews - Volume 24, Issue

Reviews provide a synthesis of published literature on a topic and describe its current state-of-art. Reviews in clinical research are thus useful when designing studies or developing practice guidelines. The two standard types of reviews are (a)…

Medical Communications - Volume 22, Issue

Meeting reports are an aspect of ‘medical’ and other technical writing that has had little discussion. The following might be of interest to medical writers asked to provide rapid, reliable, objective reports of various types of meeting. The United…

English Grammar and Style - Volume 23, Issue

Pronouns are useful referents (i.e. the thing doing the referring) to avoid repetition of words (usually nouns). Although personal pronouns (he, she, and I, in particular) are infrequent in medical writing, the neutral ‘it’ and the demonstrative…

The Light Stuff - Volume 22, Issue

A call to abandon the useless anachronism of the ‘define at first use’ rule for abbreviations Definitions CTD – Common Technical Document (dossier submitted for marketing authorization) eCTD – Electronic Common Technical Document QC – Quality…

The Light Stuff - Volume 23, Issue

Anecdotes and quotes related (more or less) to scientific writing   Pigeons are like editors, they both do the icky to your most cherished work, but at least pigeons don't say, Now it really sings. Cecil Adams, The Straight Dope Ignorant people…

Out On Our Own - Volume 24, Issue

Editorial

All of us are aware by now that we can't live without technology and not only at work. With advice, aids, appliances and apps in abundance, we are at the point where we can't see the wood for the trees. Thank goodness we have advice from M…

Mind the gap – towards complete and transparent reporting of animal research - Volume 26, Issue

Several initiatives have been taken to standardise the reporting of animal studies in peer-reviewed scientific journals, such as the ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) and GSPC (Gold Standard Publication Checklist)…