It was my first day of high school, and the bell had just rung announcing first period. There I sat in Mrs Ruth’s earth science class at a desk on the opposite side of the room from the blackboard, but not so far away, I hoped, that it was obvious I was trying to make myself invisible among the other wide-eyed freshmen. The desks were arranged in clumps, and as Mrs Ruth introduced herself, she stopped at each one, licking her thumb and counting out worksheets.
“Read the instructions,” Mrs Ruth said, “and then complete the worksheet. It shouldn’t take you more than 2 minutes.”
Two minutes?! I thought. A list of bullet points ran the length of the page. I looked to see if anyone else was feeling similarly overwhelmed, but my new classmates were already scribbling away as fast as they could, so I followed their lead. Per Mrs Ruth’s directions, I read the instructions—“Write your name neatly in the top right-hand corner, and read every question before answering any.”—and moved on to the first bullet point.
- How many sides does a triangle have?
Three, duh. I scrawled the answer. The second bullet point told me to, from memory, list as many dinosaurs as I could. The class was quiet except for pencils dutifully scratching answers. These questions were a breeze. Maybe this worksheet would only take 2 minutes after all.
- What is the capital of Ohio?
Columbus!
- What is Will Smith’s character’s name on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?
Will Smith—he plays himself!
And before I knew it, I reached the last bullet point, which, surprisingly, wasn’t a question at all.
- Do not answer any of the previous questions. Make sure your name is written neatly, and hand in a blank worksheet.
Groans rippled across the room as other students arrived at the last bullet point. When all our pencils were down and our cheeks were red with embarrassment, Mrs Ruth asked who’d read the instructions. Of course, we all raised our hands. But Mrs Ruth corrected us: no, we hadn’t. Reading the instructions meant more than glancing the words. It meant understanding and acting on them; if we’d written anything on the page other than our names, we’d already failed our first high school assignment.
The AMA Manual of Style is, at its core, a gigantic set of instructions, and on top of the style guide, the websites for JAMA and the journals comprising the JAMA Network each contain links to lengthy Instructions for Authors that explain everything from how manuscripts should be formatted to the number of tables, figures, references, words, etc, individual article types allow. A large part of the job of a manuscript editor is to make sure articles follow the instructions they’re supposed to in preparation for publication, and on a surprising number of occasions, I’ve worked with authors who have argued or rejected fundamental style points or have ignored instructions on the website specific to the journal that’s publishing their research. The instructions aren’t arbitrary, and the AMA Manual of Style exists to help ensure the reporting of research and data is rigorous, lucid, and consistent.
I think back to Mrs Ruth and my first day of high school often: if you don’t read, understand, and follow the instructions, you’ve failed before you’ve even begun.—Suzanne Walker
Another great post and always applicable for those of us who tend to scan because we feel rushed to beat the clock.
Great story, which I have seen in various permutations. But it is a lesson well learned. Sometimes the obvious is not so obvious because we think it is wrong.
I, too, got caught by that exercise back in the day. I started out well, but got bored and in a hurry, and … well, you know what happened.
My main reason for posting here, though, is to mention that it’s not unusual for journal instructions to be inconsistent. In one place they’ll say do this, and in another place say do that. I find this annoying and confusing. It seems to me that the fewer instructions, the better. Some journals have gone to a “your paper, your way” approach for the initial submission, which I really like. If the paper does get accepted, then the formatting must be brought up to journal requirements — but otherwise, you don’t waste time trying to match what the journal wants for a paper that isn’t going to get published there.