Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface to the fourth edition
- Layout of the fourth edition
- Preface to the first edition
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Problem: the illness
- Part II Solution: symptomatic relief
- 4 Technology, changing language and authority
- 5 Guidelines to clearer writing
- 6 Spelling
- 7 Is there a better word?
- 8 Superfluous words
- 9 Imprecise words
- 10 Superfluous phrases
- 11 Trouble with short words
- 12 Use of the passive voice
- 13 Consistency: number and tenses
- 14 Word order
- 15 Punctuation
- 16 Circumlocution
- 17 Words and parts of speech for EAL writers
- 18 Clichés and article titles
- 19 Constructing sentences
- 20 Further help with sentences for EAL writers
- 21 Drawing clear graphs
- 22 It can be done
- Part III Practice: recuperation
- Appendix British–American English
- References and further reading
- Index
22 - It can be done
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface to the fourth edition
- Layout of the fourth edition
- Preface to the first edition
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Problem: the illness
- Part II Solution: symptomatic relief
- 4 Technology, changing language and authority
- 5 Guidelines to clearer writing
- 6 Spelling
- 7 Is there a better word?
- 8 Superfluous words
- 9 Imprecise words
- 10 Superfluous phrases
- 11 Trouble with short words
- 12 Use of the passive voice
- 13 Consistency: number and tenses
- 14 Word order
- 15 Punctuation
- 16 Circumlocution
- 17 Words and parts of speech for EAL writers
- 18 Clichés and article titles
- 19 Constructing sentences
- 20 Further help with sentences for EAL writers
- 21 Drawing clear graphs
- 22 It can be done
- Part III Practice: recuperation
- Appendix British–American English
- References and further reading
- Index
Summary
We have criticized medical writers, but praise is due to those who write well, and there are many who do. It is not so easy to find their writing because there are not the indicators to good writing that there are to bad. We started our dissection of style with Watson and Crick’s description of DNA (see p. 25), but their article is now 60 years old. With kind permission of the author and of the publishers, we reproduce here a Viewpoint from the Lancet from 2013 that is a model of clarity. We are not asking you to read some deep theory about an arcane disease interesting only to a handful of sub-specialists. It is an essay about type 2 diabetes, a condition so common and important that it will interest almost all medical writers. Now, of course, most research projects are of only limited interest, but the writers’ messages would come across better by reflecting the succinctness and flow of this essay rather than the polysyllables and discursion of too many research articles.
The essay is reproduced here in full, after which we make comments. But a preliminary comment is that the essay does not start by telling us that type 2 diabetes is a disease of epidemic proportions: the author wastes no words telling us what we already know; he tells us right away what he wants to say. And a general comment is to note, as you read through, how few of the words and constructions that appear in our index appear in the essay.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Medical WritingA Prescription for Clarity, pp. 323 - 328Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014