AMWA Blog

The Style-Conscious Medical Communicator

Medical writers and editors are often the core contributors on writing projects, and they need a solid understanding of grammar, punctuation, usage, and style.

In writing, style refers to the preferred way we express ourselves in writing and how we represent an organization’s identity or a company’s brand. Style guides or manuals include myriad instructions about word choice, grammar, abbreviations, citations, and other details that create and maintain an identity for a publication or text.

A Brief Guide to AMA Inclusive Language Guidelines

Language is powerful and can be used to illuminate, explain, heal, hurt, include, or exclude. 

The English language is evolving constantly, and medical communicators need to stay abreast of best practices. Inclusive language is one way that medical communicators can avoid bias and create a respectful climate for all people. 

Manuscript Editing: Tools and Tips for Medical Communicators

Every document improves with editing, and medical editors are key to the process of creating consistent, readable, and error-free manuscripts.

What are the fundamentals of manuscript editing for medical communicators? What are editors looking for when they edit manuscripts? What tools are available when editors seek to create high-quality manuscripts?

A Question of Style: Writing Style Guides

What’s your style? Are you an AMA person? An APA aficionado? Does your employer use a house style guide? 

For freelancers, perhaps the more important question is: What writing style guide does your client want you to use?

Conversance with Fundamentals of Health Economics

By Robert J. Bonk, PhD

Medical communicators need a level of conversance with terminology and concepts in the field of health economics as cost becomes an outcome for treatment decisions. This blog introduces the fundamentals of health economics to medical communicators.

The Importance of Quality Control in Medical Writing

No one is perfect. 

Even the best medical writers make the occasional mistake. That is why it is important to use every tool at our disposal to make sure that each project’s content, style, and format are high quality.

Editing and Organizing References in EndNote

By Stephen N. Palmer, PhD, ELS, Texas Heart Institute

Use these EndNote tips and tricks to save time and solve problems when citing book chapters, making global text edits, maintaining journal title words and abbreviations, collaborating with other users, and correcting erroneous page numbers and corrupted in-text citations. This Mini Tutorial describes tips for EndNote X7. Exact steps may differ for later versions.

Proofreading Tips for Busy Medical Communicators

In medical communication, it is critical to ensure that documents and other materials are free from mistakes, inconsistencies, and errors. The stakes are high, and even though few of us reach perfection, it is important to utilize all the tools at our disposal to get as close as we can.

Medical Editing Checklist: An Essential Tool for Success

Checklists are popular these days. And for good reason. 

Ever since surgeon and author Atul Gawande published The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right  in 2009, checklists have proliferated in many fields, and revolutionized the way we conduct business and practice medicine.

Medical Communicators and Medical Advisory Board Meetings

Pharmaceutical companies look to medical advisory boards to help shape the big‑picture aspects of their work. Are their products benefiting patients and health care professionals? Can they do a better job of meeting the needs of patients?

Writing Excellent Conference and Meeting Abstracts

How do medical communicators distill the results of complex studies into just a few hundred words? 

Many times, they do it by writing conference or meeting abstracts.

Tables and Graphs Are Medical Communicators’ Best Friends

Imagine a toolbox without a hammer. 

Medical communicators have toolboxes too. Visuals, such as tables and graphs, belong in that toolbox. We are telling scientific stories, and data are important elements in many of those stories.

Getting Technical: Is There a Difference Between a Medical Technical Writer and a Medical Writer?

Both terms describe someone who communicates medical and health information to specific audiences.

A medical technical writer is another term used to describe a medical writer. From our perspective, the terms are interchangeable. Medical writing is technical writing for medical and health concepts.

Certificate vs Certification: Which Path Is Right for You?

When people are looking to establish or further a career as a medical writer, they often have questions about the differences between earning a certificate in medical writing and certification, which means earning the Medical Writer Certified (MWC®) credential.

5 Tips for Equity and Inclusion in Medical Writing and Editing

Talking so everyone can hear

We have heard the words “equity” and “inclusion” many times in recent months. But we may not all have connected them with our work as writers and editors in health, medicine, and science. How can medical communicators help create a more equitable, inclusive world?

As writers and editors, we can play a role in giving all people the opportunity to understand and use health information so that they can participate in clinical trials, understand their health care providers’ instructions, and take other actions that help reduce and eradicate social, economic, and health disparities.

Applying Writing Tutors’ Communication Techniques as a Medical Editor

This blog is based on an article written by Misty Bailey, MA, ELS(D), Kirsten Benson, EdD, and Anne Marie Weber‑Main, PhD, that was originally published in the AMWA Journal.

As a medical editor, your challenge is to use techniques that effectively balance the need for clarity with respect for the authors’ ideas. In other words, communication approaches need to empower authors while accomplishing the common goal of producing an easy‑to‑read piece of writing that clearly and effectively communicates the authors’ message and intent. 

Quality Control Review of Safety Narratives: Beyond Checking the Data

This article is based on content presented by Kent Steinriede, MS, at the AMWA Medical Writing & Communication Conference. It was originally published in the AMWA Journal.

“Find out what the story is,” Kent Steinriede stressed throughout his session about the quality control (QC) review of safety narratives. Steinriede highlighted the elements of the safety narrative, source documents and tools used in QC review, and tips for best QC work.

Edit Smart...Edit Fast! Tips For Editing Productivity

Writing and editing go hand-in-hand to create a masterpiece. A well-written article is like a fine piece of jewelry. Think of the content as the design of the jewelry and the editing as the polish.  Just as a ring without polish looks like a piece of lackluster metal with a potentially beautiful gem, a poorly edited article loses its charm even if the content is strong.