Questions From Users of the Manual

Q: What do you recommend regarding the necessity of including state names (or province names or country names) with the names of certain well-known cities?

A: We used to have a list of cities that could stand without a state (or province or country), but we discontinued that with the ninth edition and recommend that a state or country name be included with all cities.  (What is well known to one may not be well known to another.)  For details and exceptions, see section 14.5.

Q: Do you recommend using “eg” or “e.g.”? Since this represents the shortening of 2 words, I believe “e.g.” would be correct.

A: We recommend using “eg,” closed up, with no periods. See the list of Clinical, Technical, and Other Common Terms in section 14.11. It is true that this abbreviation represents 2 words, but within the list in section 14.11 you will note that most of the abbreviations included represent at least 2 words and yet they are joined without periods. This is a fairly common practice.

Q: I can’t find anything in the Manual about “normal saline,” but I seem to remember that this term was not preferred. Help.

A: Your memory is good.  In the ninth edition of the Manual (section 15.11), we did  indicate a preference for isotonic sodium chloride solution over normal saline. However, in the current edition we dropped that preference and consider normal saline acceptable, so there is no need to change it. If an author uses isotonic sodium chloride solution, however, that too may stand.  Both terms are acceptable.—Cheryl Iverson, MA

One thought on “Questions From Users of the Manual

  1. I am a professional med/sci editor and have been using AMA 11th with extreme frustration. The list of abbreviations for Clinical, Technical and Other common terms in 14:11 does not include vs, eg, or ie, and neither “versus” nor “vs” are in the index. The paper I am editing has “versus” is the title. If AMA style is to use vs in that case, that change seems appropriate but I need to add a query that explains the reason for the change.

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