Medical Writing Plain Language and Readability Lingua Franca and Beyond

Volume 24, Issue 1 - Plain Language and Readability

Lingua Franca and Beyond

Abstract

Writing is something that I have always loved. Actually, as a teenager I would have studied literature, but I changed my mind at the last year at school. I became a paediatrician instead for a few years but then little by little, my career turned towards writing, precisely medical writing. However, I am not a native English speaker – I am Polish. My mother tongue does not even belong to the Germanic languages, and my language roots are completely different. This difference and my overall background made me think that I would never be able to write medical papers in English. Then life started to create a different scenario: I discovered EMWA, a bunch of open and friendly people. Laura Collada, who is EMWA's Public Relations Officer, convinced me to start as administrator of the EMWA discussion group on LinkedIn, and Phillip Leventhal, the Editor-in-Chief of Medical Writing, encouraged me to become editor of a new section for medical writers like me, who either write in English as a second language or who write in languages other than English.

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Articles

Plain language and readability
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Get real: Avoiding corporate gobbledygook
Transferring regulation into practice: The challenges of the new layperson summary of clinical trial results
Profile: An interview with Art Gertel on the Budapest Working Group
News from the EMA
The Webscout
In the Bookstores
English Grammar and Style Revising medical writing Reasons not rules: Backtracking, pronoun-induced Part 2 – Single syntactic unit revision
Regulatory Writing Briefing documents: A case apart
Medical Communications
Lingua Franca and Beyond
Out on Our Own

Member Login

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The Write Stuff Archive Contact Instructions for Authors Article Template (Word) Journal Policies

Editoral Board

Editor-in-Chief

Raquel Billiones

Co-Editors

Evguenia Alechine

Jonathan Pitt

Managing Editor

Victoria White

Associate Editors

Anuradha Alahari

Jennifer Bell

Nicole Bezuidenhout

Claire Chang

Barbara Grossman

Sarah Milner

John Plant

Sampoorna Rappaz

Amy Whereat

Section Editors

Daniela Kamir

AI/Automation

Jennifer Bell

Biotechnology

Nicole Bezuidenhout 

Digital Communication

Somsuvro Basu

EMWA News 

Ana Sofia Correia 

Gained in Translation

Ivana Turek

Getting Your Foot in the Door

Wendy Kingdom / Amy Whereat

Good Writing Practice

Alison McIntosh 

In the Bookstores

Maria Kołtowska-Häggström

Lingua Franca and Beyond

Maddy Dyer

Publications

Lisa Chamberlain-James

Medical Communications/Writing for Patients

Payal Bhatia

Medical Devices

Evguenia Alechine

My First Medical Writing

Anuradha Alahari

News from the EMA

Adriana Rocha

Out on Our Own

Tiziana von Bruchhausen

Pharmacovigilance

Clare ChangZuo Yen Lee 

Regulatory Matters

Sam Hamilton

Regulatory Public Disclosure

Claire Gudex

Teaching Medical Writing

Louisa Ludwig-Begall / Sarah Kabani

The Crofter: Sustainable Communications

Louisa Marcombes

Veterinary Writing

Editors Emeritus

Elise Langdon-Neuner

Phil Leventhal

Layout Designer

Chris Monk