Dr. Abel Scribe's Guide to AMA Medical Style and Documentation

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.

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).

AMA Style Resources by Doc Scribe

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.

	AMA Style Stat! webpage is a concise style guide applying the essential features of the AMA Manual of Style (2007) to research papers prepared for for conferences, seminars, and classes.
	AMA Style Stat! (PDF 210 KB, 25 pp). The PDF version is the version of record, formatted for printing and reference. It includes the Abridged Index Medicus list of core clinical journals and their abbreviations.
	Abridged Index Medicus (AIM) (PDF 45 KB, 4 pp). The National Library of Medicine MEDLINE/PubMed list of 119 "Core Clinical" journals (with abbreviations added) is a handy resource when formatting references.
	List of Journals Indexed for Medline (PDF 1.3 MB, 384 pp) replaced the Index Medicus, but has ceased publication. The list is now an online database. This 2007 edition is a handy desktop reference for journal abbreviations.
	AScribe Reference Manager. This site has its origin in a computer program written in the early 1990s. Though obsolete technically, it organizes and formats references in contemporary AMA and ICMJE styles.

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)

Conversion Table: Conventional to Metric SI Units (PDF Download)

Expanded format for referencing online sources (PDF Download)

FAQ NB: Use of conventional vs metric units (Web Page FAQ: SI UNits)

Table of Contents (Web Page: Short Form) (Download Full TOC PDF)

What's New? Changes from the last edition (Web Page: Use Postal Codes!)

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.

Patrias, Karen. Citing medicine: the NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers [Internet]. 2nd ed.

Wendling, Daniel L., technical editor. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US); 2007 [insert

Year Month Day]. Available from: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/citingmedicine

If the URL above does not work try http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bookres.fcgi/citmed/frontpage.html

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors

Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) drafted the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals to help reduce the chaos in medical writing. This became known as the "Vancouver style."

ICMJE Uniform Requirements (PDF About 120 KB). The Uniform requirement are also available online at the ICMJE Web site. Reference formats are maintained by the US National Library of Medicine (below).
ICMJE Reference Style Sheet (PDF 40 KB) from the National Library of Medicine (August 2009). Please verify that it is current with that on the official US National Library of Medicine Web site.
The Uniform Requirements are intended to aid authors preparing manuscripts for review and publication. The format is not well documented--not going beyond the "Instructions for Authors" found in most journals--but comes with an extensive set of sample references. Many journals have adopted ICMJE style for their publication (list of journals).

AMERICAN SCIENTIST

The Science of Scientific Writing by George Gopen and Judith Swan. This article was first published in the pages of the American Scientist in 1990. It was originally developed in a faculty writing workshop at the Duke Medical School. It has worn well the test of time. For many years it was embargoed on the American Scientist website. The embargo has lapsed and Doc has made it available in PDF format: The Science of Scientific Writing (90 KB).

amazon.com
AMA Journal Editors. American Medical Association Manual of Style. 10th ed. Oxford University
Press USA; 2007. Read Doc's Review.

From Amazon.com: "The 10th edition has expanded its electronic guidelines, with the understanding that authors now routinely submit articles through online systems and often cite Web-only content. Ethical and legal issues receive increased attention, with detailed guidelines on authorship, conflicts of interest, scientific misconduct, intellectual property, and the protection of individuals' rights. . . . More than a style manual, this 10th edition offers invaluable guidance on how to navigate the dilemmas that authors and researchers and their institutions, medical editors and publishers, and members of the news media who cover scientific research confront in a society that has thrust these issues center stage."

Link to Amazon.com: (Hardcover: $38.50 (amazon), 1032 pages).

Taylor, Barry. N., & Thompson, Ambler. Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI): (Special Publication 811, 2008 ed.). Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2008.
Free guide for the metric system. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is the official representative of the United States before the Convention du Metre, the body that defines the International System of Units (SI) for the world scientific community. This is also known as the metric system. A free 90 page style guide is available from their website. The link is directly to the document in PDF format.

Link to NIST SP811-2008: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/pdf/sp811.pdf (1.9 MB).

amazon.com

Reference Manager. Version 12. 2008. ISI Researchsoft. Windows 2000-XP. A free trial version

is available at the Reference Manager website.

Reference Manager is not the top seller that Endnote is, but some find it the more refined application. It is now part of the ISI empire of bibliographic software, and priced in line with Endnote (it was about twice as expensive). It is also now available in a student version for a dollar more than Endnote. I recall it as being especially suited for medical research (surf PubMed).

Links to Amazon.com: (Retail Version $180) (Student Version $95).

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