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Guides to AMA and ICMJE Styles The American Medical Association Manual of Style provides instructions for authors and editors preparing research papers for review and publication (AMA Manual at Amazon.com). The latest edition (2007) is over 1000 pages. The Writer's Guide to AMA Style and AMA Medstyle Stat! apply AMA style features to craft papers in final format, the format appropriate for papers prepared for conferences and seminars. The AMA's style and "Vancouver" style, the style of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), are very similar. Developed to reduce the proliferation of styles in medical writing, ICMJE style has been adopted some leading journals, and is accepted by hundreds of others. |
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AMA style now requires giving conversion factors to SI (metric system) units for conventional clinical measures. For example, "The blood glucose concentration of 126 mg/dL (to convert to millimoles per liter, multiply by 0.055) was used as a criterion for diagnosing diabetes" (AMA 2007, "New FAQ" Page). A conversion table from the AMA Manual can be downloaded below and at the JAMA website. This is the most important change to AMA style in the new edition of the Manual. There are slight changes to formats for references to online sources, and the dubious practice of "versioning" these same sources. AMAicus obscurantus? The style is afflicated with senseless complexity. For example, periods are not used with abbreviations or initials. But there is at least one exception. When the abbreviation for "saint" appears before a city, eg, St Louis, there is no period. But when the abbreviation appears before a name, eg, Robert St. James, a period is required! There is no way of knowing how many such exceptions lurk in these pages. You simply have to stumble onto them (Doc's Review). |
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Trick or Treat! The new AMA Manual makes many small revisions or corrections, some devilishly difficult to find. For example, the old Manual required long quotes of dialogue, of any length, to be run-on in a text. That note is simply gone, at least where in the 1032 pages it might have moved to is a mystery. AMA Stat! Expanded Text Revision 2009.
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OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press publishes the AMA Manual. They have thoughtfully provided many excerpts from the manual, including the complete table of contents. AMA Manual of Style, 10th Edition, at the Oxford University Press (Index Page) An interesting page on the website documents the history of the AMA Manual, including publication figures for the eighth edition (1989, 33,000+) and ninth edition (1998, 44,000+). At $55.00 it is a bit pricey for students looking to format a research paper. The "Instructions for Authors" on the JAMA website help, but they are focused on writing for publication; the instructions for presenting tables and figures apply to copy manuscripts submitted in electronic format. These do not apply to papers presented in their final format for conferences and seminars. Note, AMA style continues to spell website as two words, Web site. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE Citing Medicine. The National Library of Medicine has published a style guide, available free at their website. It is available only chapter by chapter in (uncompressed) pdf format, about a megabyte (MB) per chapter. The text is huge (1000 pages?) in excruciating detail, with 26 chapters and 5 appendixes.
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