Reflections like this never get old to me: Britt Peterson's piece at the Boston Globe: Why we love the language police.

More later...

Headline: New Research Unlocks the Secret of Employee Recognition
via Forbes.com

Great article.

Bersin writes, "Most CEO’s would pay millions of dollars to reduce voluntary turnover (this is when good people leave on their own)," and that's very encouraging to hear. But the number of companies willing to roll the dice on voluntary turnover remains, I think, quite large.

What's your experience like? Have you worked for an organization that recognizes and rewards outstanding 'editorial' achievement?

Q: A hyphenated compound appears in a title (subtitle, table heading, or text heading) – do you capitalize both parts of the hyphenated combo?

A: Naturally, following AMA style, it depends, but the following examples illustrate instances in which both parts of the hyphenated combo are capitalized in titles:

RAI-Refractory Disease
Drug-Resistant Bacteria
Age-Related Macular Degeneration
Cost-Benefit Analysis
B-Cell Lymphoma

Why?

Because (a) both elements of the hyphenated combo carry equal weight, and (b) the combos themselves are what AMA calls "temporary compounds" – that is, hyphenated when they appear together as a single adjective in front of the noun they modify but not hyphenated otherwise. Thus, a "B cell" is just that, a B cell, without a hyphen. But when "B cell" is used as an adjective to specify a type of lymphoma, then it's "B-cell lymphoma" in a sentence and "B-Cell Lymphoma" in a title.

Corrigenda continued: Stedman's Plus Spellchecker

I've been testing the Stedman's Plus Medical/Pharmaceutical Spellchecker Premium Edition program for months now.

Question: Should I make public my growing list of spelling errors programmed into the Premium Edition?

Talk about frustrating...

10th edition corrigenda

Oxford gives the erratum (in PDF) for the 10th edition manual here [link]; it was last updated in November 2008.

Of course, it could use another update. Or two. Compare the hyphenated ranges in the example figure on page 107 with those given in the figure on 115. Ah-ha! Does a range hyphen take space on both sides or not?

Despite being incomplete, the erratum's still a solid hour of fun for the happy few nerdy enough to track down each error on the list, discovering the ones that got away from our own and Oxford's eyes.

en dash defeated

I have to admit... it never gets old seeing 10th edition examples of the proper use of the en dash fail to example any en dashes.

Brave little hyphen: even under 8.3.2, En Dash, you've conspicuously prevailed.

Breast cancer screening, 40-49 years of age

From Dr Lichtenfeld’s blog:

A review of the Hellquist et al study of breast cancer screening by mammography.

Today, we have another report in the journal Cancer… that… suggests that screening women in their 40's significantly reduces the risk of death from breast cancer.

In brief, the researchers looked at deaths from breast cancer in the entire country of Sweden with follow-up that averaged about 16 years.

[R]esearchers concluded that women in the 40-49 years old age group who were invited to screening decreased their rates of death from breast cancer by 26%. When they looked only at women who actually got screened, that rate increased to 29%. Both of these are very substantial numbers, and in their opinion showed a significant benefit for screening mammograms in women 40-49.

The authors also did an analysis of how many women needed to be invited to screening to save one life from breast cancer. That number was one of the reasons the USPSTF [United States Preventive Services Task Force] elected not to recommend routine screening mammograms in women ages 40-49. In the current study, 1252 women would have to be invited to screening over 10 years to save one life. The statistical analysis also suggested that number may be as low as 958 or as high as 1915. To some, that number may be sufficient to justify screening, to others it is too many women would have to be screened. In other words, it becomes a value judgment whether enough lives are saved from breast cancer in the 40-49 YO age group to justify screening.

"compared with" vs "compared to"

Because the outcome difference between treatment arms is what's being discussed, I've used "compared with," but the client keeps changing it back to "compare to." What authority should I use to demonstrate that "with" really is preferred?

See page 390 in in the 10th edition AMA manual (or 249 in the 9th):

One thing or person is usually compared with another when the aim is to examine similarities or differences in detail. An entity is compared to another when a single striking similarity (or dissimilarity) is observed, or when a thing of one class is likened to one of another class, without analysis (ie, one entity is comparable to another).

Thus AMA confirms what we already know; the more important question is whether AMA is considered authoritative. Does it carry weight?

Some years ago I was confronted by a relatively new but senior member of a company's client service team—a physician with considerable clinical experience and pile of publications:

"Look," he said a little too brusquely, "why do you keep doing this to P values? Nobody knows what this is—I don't think I've ever seen them formatted this way."

I answered that the account used AMA style, then tried to give AMA's rationale for probability value formatting but never got a chance to finish.

"AMA?" he interrupted. "That's JAMA, right?"

I nodded.

"I haven't published anything in JAMA in a decade, at least. JAMA? Who publishes in JAMA anymore?"

If AMA's take on compared with fails to inspire sufficient confidence, you can also cite the ACS Style Guide (page 48) or the 15th edition of Chicago (page 206 and, yes, I know I need to upgrade) or the AP Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law (page 54).

Citation format: supplemental appendix

How do I reference the supplemental appendix given only as a link in the body of the online version of the article I'm working with? Can I just reference the article?

That's a very good question from a Med Ed writer. For clarity, let's back up and make sure we're all on the same page.

The article in question (which I'll keep private) is a standard original article published in a major peer-reviewed journal. The online version of the article is the version actually seen and used by the Med Ed writer. For the purposes of illustration, I've created an imaginary original article citation (mirroring the real article I was asked about) formatted in proper AMA (see 3.15.1 in 10th edition manual):

Smith JJ, Garcia R, Crossman W, et al. Safety and efficacy of XYZ123, inhibitor of JAK in human cancer cells. J Clin Oncol. 2010;28(27):115-123. http://jcoascopubs.org/content/28/27/smith. Published September 16, 2010. Accessed September 20, 2010.

It's a fake citation, but let's pretend that this Smith citation refers to the real article I'm being asked about. I've applied proper AMA format for an online article with a publication date and page numbers corresponding to those used in the print version. Pretty standard.

The challenge here is that the Med Ed writer intends to use data not present in the Smith article itself but given in a "Supplemental Appendix" only available by hyperlink in the online version. Readers click the words "Supplemental Appendix" and a PDF automatically loads in the browser, providing data, graphs, charts, and explanation not available in the print version. I checked the print version and confirmed that an editor's note does refer readers to the same "Supplemental Appendix" available online.

That should bring us all up to speed. Finally, the question: What's the proper AMA citation for data taken from that "Supplemental Appendix" PDF?

My initial reaction was to recommend 3.11.8 Supplements, on page 49 of the 10th edition manual, which would format our Smith as follows:

Smith JJ, Garcia R, Crossman W, et al. Safety and efficacy of XYZ123, inhibitor of JAK in human cancer cells. J Clin Oncol. 2010;28(27)(suppl):115-123. http://jcoascopubs.org/content/28/27/smith. Published September 16, 2010. Accessed September 20, 2010.

But that's incorrect. The "Supplemental Appendix" PDF hyperlinked in our Smith article is not, after all, a supplement issue of the journal. Instead, it's supplemental matter available with the online version of the standard publication.

The correct format is given in example 12, 3.15.1 Online Journals, on page 66. The paragraph above example 12 explains that

in the example below, the online article includes a video. This is mentioned in an editor's note in the print journal; in the online journal, a link to the video appears in the table of contents and as a link within the article.

The video in that example is supplemental matter available with the online version of the standard publication—just like the PDF available with the online version of our Smith article.

Thus, the answer is to use the format modeled in example 12 of section 3.15.1, reproduced below. Note the bracketed insert, the new URL (corresponding to the URL of the PDF), and the (optional) removal of the published date:

Smith JJ, Garcia R, Crossman W, et al. Safety and efficacy of XYZ123, inhibitor of JAK in human cancer cells [supplemental appendix]. J Clin Oncol. 2010;28(27):115-123. http://jcoascopubs.org/content/28/27/smith/suppappx.pdf. Accessed September 20, 2010.

Citation format: online article not in print

Is there an official way to cite articles not yet available in print but already available online?

Yes, and AMA style gives both a URL and DOI citation format, as in the following example:

URL
Lo SS, Mumby PB, Norton J, et al. Prospective multicenter study of the impact of the 21-gene Recurrence Score assay on medical oncologist and patient adjuvant breast cancer treatment selection. J Clin Oncol. 2010;28. http://jco.ascopubs.org/cgi/doi/10.1200/JCO.2008.20.2119. Accessed February 3, 2010.

DOI
Lo SS, Mumby PB, Norton J, et al. Prospective multicenter study of the impact of the 21-gene Recurrence Score assay on medical oncologist and patient adjuvant breast cancer treatment selection. J Clin Oncol. 2010;28. doi:10.1200/JCO.2008.20.2119.

Which format is best?

Generally, this editor prefers the DOI format because it's permanent, unlike Web pages that can move, with links that might—for whatever reason—break. The AMA manual agrees:

When the DOI is provided [ie, when the DOI system is being used by the publishing company] it is preferable to cite it rather than the URL.

You can read more about the DOI system at the International DOI Foundation Web site [link]. Also, see section 3.15.1 in the AMA manual, pages 64-67, for the complete discussion.

You should use Research Solutions too

Copy editors sometimes help content developers find and retrieve information, and this editor's no exception. Someone recommended I try Research Solutions, and I did. I'm not a little bit happy with that decision.

In fact, Research Solutions is now my go-to vendor for document delivery.

You should try them too.

Here's the order feedback I sent to their Client Relations representative:

1/5/2010

RE: Welcome to Research Solutions!

To: Client Relations - Research Solutions

From: Stephen Wilkins

Thank you for your note*[name withheld]...

I wanted to tell you that the book chapter I ordered this afternoon just arrived a few minutes ago—remarkable speed, idiot simplicity, and reasonable cost make this transaction the best I've experienced in almost 10 years of editorial work.

By comparison, I ordered the same material from Infotrieve only yesterday—still haven't heard from them, rang their offices and got stuck on hold, was eventually forced to leave a message, still unreturned. The editorial equivalent of root canal surgery, behold: Infotrieve.

From now on, I'll order eveything from you folks...

How do you spell — canceling?

You will have noticed by now that inflected forms of the word cancel sometimes double up on the consonant -l, and spell-checker approves of both versions, cancelling and canceling. But why? And what's an editor to do?

Historical Perspective

Fixed spelling as a concept—the very idea that there is a correct (and only one) way to spell canceling, for example—is an entirely modern notion. A spelling bee (or spelldown) would have been unthinkable before the sixteenth century and probably impossible to organize before the eighteenth. And acording to Bernard Comrie, the relationship between English spelling and spoken English is still more skunked today than what's found in many other languages.

That there should be such mayhem in English orthography reflects, in part, the old view about language—that writing is a visualization of speech, derivative, less real. The spoken word is what's full of possibility—of promise or of woe. Spelling? No, no, give us speech—all the excitement and thrill of the spoken word. The text was the thing that came after, later, if it came at all, which is one reason why Middle English orthography between 1100 and 1450 varies so much from one region to another—spellings approximated the sound or pronunciation of a scribe's region or the center of learning that bred him. Even within one manuscript, a single word might take ten different spellings.

What exactly is the link between pronunciation and spelling? If you haven't seen George Bernard Shaw's joke about ghoti being a perfectly valid alternative spelling for the word fish, Google it. Why should we spell cough with that nutty -gh and not a very simple -f? The word sounds like kof, after all. And in truth, there have been attempts in the not-so-distant past to reform English spelling along just these lines. Fortunately, they failed. Pronunciation spelling—if it were to become the standard—might make our beloved English even more unpredictable and chaotic than it already is. Especially in the South.

In short, English has been complicated from the beginning: it hardly got a moment's peace from invasions, migrations, plunders, and scepters—Norse, Roman, Norman, French, and more. Early attempts to improve orthography—like Thomas Smith's Dialogue concerning the Correct and Emended Writing of the English Language (1568)—were written in, well, Latin. Go figure. In some ways it's useful to think of English as a frontier language, borrowing and trading in so many other languages to stay alive. Some irregularities are to be expected, and some of them simply elude any satisfying (or useful) explanation. The mature editor simply points, instead, toward historical perspective and lets someone else worry about it.

Practical Response

All historical rambling aside, you can thank Noah Webster for the single consonant standard variation, canceling. It's an Americanism, Websterschrifte, or just plain bollocks (if you ask the other English speakers, the ones responsible for Old Speckled Hen and the Oxford English Dictionary). Webster is responsible for a great many so-called Americanisms. Why do Americans take the -u out of the word honour? Because Noah Webster taught us to. Why center instead of centre? Because he said so, and for a long time he's been the boss of us, the boss of our orthography.

This editor suspects the best choice for AMA editors is the single -l spelling, canceling. Remember that AMA style prefers Merriam-Webster Collegiate, and the first listing for each inflection has but one -l. When pressed for why—Why shouldn't we do it the Old Speckled Hen way?—the answer is that Webster's way is more common (at least according to Google, today*). The Webster way also allows AMA editors to follow a handy AMA-friendly rule about standard variants: Always use the first spelling of any two standard variants given in Merriam-Webster Collegiate. It's mere rule, yes, and thus a little cold and disappointing, true, but it pays off in consistency.**

But this is just a practical answer to the general question. A more refined answer will come once you've considered, carefully, the audience your company is writing for—the audience for whom you're editing—and the crucial question of whether or not the client has any preference one way or the other. Client trumps all, even AMA.

* Based on a Google search of the AMA Web site specifically. It should be noted that general Google searches of the Web return more hits for the double-consonant variants, which is noteworthy and relevant but not necessarily normative—especially for editors following AMA style.

** Chicago also recommends this practice (see 7.1, page 278).

Check Microsoft Templates for Style Errors

If you’re using standard Microsoft templates for Word documents, you should check the boilerplate for style errors.

For example, you would expect press release templates to follow AP style, but I happened to notice that the Press release (Professional design) boilerplate begins with “Portland, OR, September 23, 2004.” That’s very close to AP style but not quite right. AP prefers standard state abbreviations, unless you’re writing a full postal address.

In other words, the press release boilerplate should begin with “Portland, Ore., September 23, 2004,” in order to match AP style.

Racial Terms

Words, like the people who use them, have a complicated history. Nowhere is that more apparent than when we write and talk about race.

Imagine that you’re asked to review and offer editorial feedback on a set of 30 PowerPoint slides to be projected at a major influenza conference in the United States. The slides will be cycled on a giant screen as several hundred physicians and healthcare workers arrive, mingle, and prepare for the actual conference proceedings.

While reviewing the slides, you notice that quotations are used in the deck, quotations from a physician who worked among the sick and dying of Camp Devens, Massachusetts, during the influenza outbreak of 1918, the worst in American history and responsible for some 600,000 deaths. The Camp's doctor (let's call him Dr Roy) described the cyanosis at Camp Devens as so bad that it was

...hard to distinguish the coloured men from the white.

The quotations are poignant and serious, strategically chosen by the slide deck's author for their emotive effect. The quotations from Dr Roy's letter make perfectly clear the menace, the lethal threat, of influenza in 1918. But the important question that you, the slide deck's editor, should ask is this:

Is it appropriate to use the racial word coloured on slides being presented at a major international influenza meeting?

The racial term coloured (or colored) was originally adopted by emancipated slaves after the American Civil War, but it was superseded in the US in the 1960s by the term black. Some who would describe themselves today as black or African American find the word colored more than simply outdated: It is offensive.

Consider Henry Louis Gates Jr, who wrote in 1969,

My grandfather was colored, my father was a Negro, and I am black.

The word colored signals a particularly difficult past, one marked by the dehumanizing machinery of slavery and segregation. Not surprisingly, Merriam-Webster warns that colored is often offensive; it doesn’t even appear in the list of racial terms provided in the 15th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style,

...black people, blacks, people of color (usually lowercased when based loosely on color) Negro, Negroes

Nor does the 10th edition of the American Medical Association (AMA) Manual of Style make any provision for the word colored. AMA provides only two possibilities, black and African American (no hyphen), but also warns that African American may be the preferred term (though it should be allowed only for US citizens of African descent).

In its original 1918 context, the word colored as used by Dr Roy at Camp Devens was probably inoffensive, but the word's political and ideological baggage simply cannot be ignored by content developers here and now. Allowing the word colored in your slides, even in quotation, strikes this editor as dangerous.

Read up on the Camp Devens experience: in 10 minutes you'll have enough material to achieve the same profound effect without having to include words with complicated baggage. The slide deck's purpose and audience should guide your editorial judgment, and there's just no reason to risk alienating the audience with a racial qualifier.

UK Dates

Someone just asked how to format UK dates.

I follow Oxford:

Date: 30 October 2008

Day: Thursday, 30 October 2008

Range: 30–31 October 2008

Note that the range is expressed with an en dash rather than a hyphen.

Clutter: another example

The following sentence appears in a physician bio I've just seen:

His main interests have focused on the role of insulin and the insulin-like growth factors in normal physiology and disease states, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.

Please note that a main interest is always already (ie, by definition) an area of focus. Thus, you wouldn't want to describe main interests as focusing on this or that: instead, main interests include.

His main interests include...

Regard or regards?

Thank you for your e-mail. In regards to your question, no, unfortunately that item is currently out of stock.

Is the word regard singular or plural in constructions like the one above?

Regard means attention, which is a noun that English speakers normally don’t count. Thus, attention paid to something—or attention given—will probably never take a final -s. You may pay close attention a number of times to a weaving car on the road in front of you, but you’re not paying attentions to a crazy driver. You’re being careful. You're paying attention. The words attention and regard are synonyms and never take a final -s.

I suspect people say (and write) with regards to and in regards to because they’re thinking of the plural construction used for greetings, as when you say,

Send Barbara my regards, will you?

And this is a perfectly legitimate exception to the no final -s rule. But in the strictest sense, this isn’t an exception: regards (meaning greetings) and regard (meaning attention) are two different words. The second one never takes a plural -s form.

So make a habit of using with regard to or in regard to (or simply concerning). It makes a difference.

More words = greater clarity?

In a paper entitled Concrete spatial language: See what I mean?, Wallentin et al make the following claim:

In general, meaning is most specific when the context is clearly specified. Therefore, the lexical units of language, ie, the words, will have more specific meaning the more context we add.

If I read them right, the authors seem to be saying that words have more specific meaning as more words are added, which you might formulate as specificity is a function of word count or add words to increase clarity, but experience teaches me that this isn't necessarily true.

Epexegesis can be bad for writing, and what Wallentin et al argue can be misunderstood easily—and not because they used too few words to express their idea. The general point they’re making—ie, context is a key component of specific meaning—is perfectly valid, as is illustrated by the following:

1. That person barely escaped the house fire.
2. That person—your daughter Sarah—barely escaped the house fire.

From (1) to (2), we’ve added context, which certainly clarifies the meaning of person. But adding words in an attempt to improve clarity can cause much trouble.

In (2), for example, we added your daughter Sarah in order to clarify that person; in doing so, we’ve made the words that person entirely tautologous and thus obsolete. In fact, they should be deleted. It's not a big deal for a single sentence, but imagine this on the scale of a 9-thousand word business proposal or manuscript.

Lexical addition, which is what Wallentin et al are advocating, is probably less helpful for breeding specificity than careful word choice in the first place. And by careful word choice I mean strategic word choice or efficient word choice.

Consider the following passage from the opening pages of Yellow Dog, by Martin Amis:

The couple stood embracing in a high-ceilinged hallway. Now the husband with a movement of the arm caused his keys to sound in their pocket. His half-conscious intention was to signal an impatience to be out. Xan would not publicaly agree, but women naturally like to prolong routine departures. It is the obverse of their fondness for keeping people waiting.

In terms of word choice, there’s a lot here in this small excerpt, but what interests me is Amis’ word choice in obverse. Of all the words a writer might have used here, all the words he could add in an attempt to flesh out what he means, this single word alone strikes me as the perfect choice.

Obverse—it means facing (which also describes Xan and Russia who are embracing); it describes objects turned toward their observer (in this case, both Xan and you and me, ie, the readers); to be obverse is to complement or serve as counterpart; it is the more conspicuous of two alternatives (and in this last sense, I detect a bit of literary irony).

Amis is writing fiction, I know, but his writing illustrates the question that all writers of texts should be asking:

What specific word choice will make my text more clear?

Maximum impact with fewest words. Whether you’re writing a grant request or a business proposal, a white paper or a marketing slogan, efficiency is key.

And honestly, you really can say more with less. What Saint-Exupéry (in Terre des homme) said of design is also true of texts:

It would seem that perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to subtract.

[Il semble que la perfection soit attente non quand il n’y a plus rein à ajouter, mais quand il n’y a plus rien à retrancher.]

Lead zero in decimals

Is a lead zero used before a decimal point? Consider the following example:

a) ...a modest improvement in A1C of .5% to 1%.

b) ...a modest improvement in A1C of 0.5% to 1%.

AMA Style prefers (b) — numerical values less than 1 typically require the lead zero. Exceptions include, (in)famously, P values and (lesser known) alpha levels.

Click here for an explanation of P values in AMA.

The least amount

Triathlete magazine provides genuine insight in an exchange with Joe Friel (world-class coach of endurance athletes). Friel is talking about endurance training, of course, but his meaning is relevant for editors (and their companies) too.

Triathlete: Do you have a particular coaching philosophy?

Joe Friel: I can put it in a nutshell... Athletes should do the least amount of training necessary to achieve their goals. I find that, once I figure out what's the least amount of training an athlete needs to achieve their goals, they usually achieve their goals. Before they were most likely doing too much to achieve their goals and fatigue was a constant factor. I don't know that I would call myself a minimalist, but I tend to hold down the volume and watch specificity very closely. I'm always making sure the athlete has things dialed in closely to what they're trying to accomplish.

You have to be a certain age to get it, I think. You've worked so hard at so very much and failed too often to miss the truth in what he's saying. You have to be exhausted.

There are a million tasks to professional editing: only a handful of them are necessary to please your client, meet your team's goals, and hone your craft. Stop trying to do everything you can do, and focus instead on those few things necessary to achieve specific goals. Hold down the volume and dial in closely.