editing process

Updates to Reporting Black and White as Racial Categories

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Everyone in the business of communication has a responsibility to use and promote the use of clear and accurate language, with words that reflect the world around us. As evidenced by perpetual updates to style manuals, dictionaries, and other resources, nomenclature is never a static enterprise.

Specifying the race or ethnicity of an individual can provide information about the generalizability of the results of a specific study. Because many individuals may have mixed heritage, a racial or ethnic distinction should not be considered absolute, and ideally it should be based on a person’s self-designation.

In the JAMA Network journals, we ask authors to provide an explanation of who classified individuals’ race, ethnicity, or both, the classifications used, and whether the options were defined by the investigator or the participant. In addition, the reasons that race/ethnicity were assessed in the study also should be described (eg, in the Methods section and/or in table footnotes).1

We have received a number of queries about the presentation of racial and ethnic terms in the AMA Manual of Style, in particular the manual’s style current preference for using lowercase for the term black. The 11th edition specifies capitalizing racial and ethnic terms that derive from geographic nouns such as Asian, Alaska Native, and Latina (chapter 10.3.2, Capitalization, Proper Nouns, Sociocultural Designations), but the terms black and white have been lowercased as racial designators (because they are not derived from proper nouns).

However, ongoing and recent events spurred us to reconsider this style recommendation. The manual’s committee met several times, conducted research, and sought input on this issue from multiple sources. We deem this issue too important to wait for change.

In weighing the options (keep black and white lowercase, capitalize just Black, or capitalize both Black and White), we reviewed usage recommendations in a variety of sources, including other style manuals (Chicago Manual of Style,2APA style,3 and the AP Stylebook4), writing by an array of scholars, and guidance on diversity from academic and government sources, such as the US National Institutes of Health.5

The committee has concluded that we will now capitalize both Black and White, which aligns with the capitalization preference applied to other racial/ethnic categories. We acknowledge that there may be instances in which a particular context may merit exception to this guidance, for example, in cases for which capitalization could be perceived as inflammatory or otherwise inappropriate.

The online style manual will be updated to reflect this change, including the section on race/ethnicity in the Usage chapter  (chapter 11.12.3, Usage, Inclusive Language, Race/Ethnicity) and the aforementioned entry in the Capitalization chapter.

There are additional language issues to consider, including use of “other” as a category and abbreviating racial and ethnic terms. The nonspecific “other” is sometimes used for comparison in data analysis but may also be a “convenience” grouping/label that should be avoided, unless it was a prespecified formal category in a database or research instrument.

In such case, the categories included in “other” should be defined and reported. Authors and researchers are advised to be as specific as possible when reporting on racial/ethnic categories (even if these comprise a small percentage of participants).

Example (not recommended): “The study included 200 White individuals, 100 Black individuals, and 100 of other race/ethnicity.”

In this situation, an editor should ask the author for further explanation, considering that the racial/ethnic background of a quarter of the study is not provided.

Example (preferred): “The study included 200 White individuals, 100 Black individuals, and 100 of other race/ethnicity, which included Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and those who reported multiple categories.”

Racial and ethnic terms also should not be abbreviated unless necessary for space constraints (eg, in tables and figures with clear expansion in explanatory footnotes or legends).

The manual’s committee will continue to explore changing trends in usage of other racial and ethnic terms as well, such as Latinx. As with all changes to the style manual, we welcome input from readers. The update to the manual online will be implemented as soon as possible, and the JAMA Network journals will begin to use Black and White as we edit new content.–Stacy Christiansen and Tracy Frey, for the AMA Manual of Style committee

References:

1. Instructions for Authors. JAMA. Updated April 13, 2020. Accessed June 19, 2020.  https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/pages/instructions-for-authors#SecReportingRace/Ethnicity

2. Black and White: a matter of capitalization. CMOS Shop Talk. Posted June 22, 2020. Accessed June 22, 2020. https://cmosshoptalk.com/2020/06/22/black-and-white-a-matter-of-capitalization/

3. APA Style. Racial and ethnic identity. Accessed June 20, 2020. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/racial-ethnic-minorities

4. AP Stylebook. Race-related coverage. Accessed June 22, 2020. https://www.apstylebook.com/race-related-coverage

5. Racial and ethnic categories and definitions for NIH diversity programs and for other reporting purposes. National Institutes of Health. Released April 8, 2015. Accessed June 20, 2020. https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/not-od-15-089.html

Nephrology Nuance

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When you’re in quarantine, you have to look for little things to spark joy in your life. I’ve found myself getting excited when I edit an article for which new AMA style guide updates come into play. Recently, while editing an article focusing on patients with end-stage kidney disease, I had the chance to refresh my knowledge on the new guidelines in the 11th edition of the AMA Manual of Style regarding nephrology nomenclature (14.18).

In accordance with the international efforts put forth by KDIGO (Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes), which focus on making terminology more patient-friendly, precise, and universal, the 11th edition has updated the nomenclature used to describe kidney function and disease.

Updates on language choice include:

Kidney vs renal: Select the more patient-friendly term (ie, kidney). Also, avoid using both terms in parallel, as this could lead to confusion over different abbreviations for the same condition (eg, RRT [renal replacement therapy] and KRT [kidney replacement therapy]).

Kidney failure vs end-stage renal disease: Kidney failure is the preferred term except when referring to eligibility for medical care under US legislation or other regulations. Patients with kidney failure should be further described by the presence or absence of therapy by dialysis, transplant, or conservative care and by symptom severity.

Decreased glomerular filtration rate: Use this instead of decreased kidney function. Kidneys execute various functions, not just glomerular filtration, so precision in terminology is preferred.

The final recommendations and a complete glossary of related terms will be available in the near future and used to inform an update to this chapter in the manual online. –Suzanne Walker

Where in the World Is the Publisher’s Location?

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If you’re into vintage video games or, like me, came of age watching copious amounts of PBS programming, you may be familiar with a certain raven-haired, scarlet-bedecked, UNESCO World Heritage Site–stealing woman of mystery.

bustle.com

Where was the elusive Carmen headed, and what thrills were in store on the journey to find her and thwart her devious plans?

In the 10th edition of the AMA Manual of Style, reference citations for books and edited books included the publisher’s location, which at times could be as hard to pinpoint as Ms Sandiego herself. However, the journey to find this information lacked the glamor of international espionage and instead featured fruitless online searches and squinting at the minuscule copyright page of a volume from the 70s that Google allowed for preview.

Particularly perplexing were the occasions when a publisher with multiple offices was listed but no indication was given as to which one produced the book in question. So where in the world was the publisher’s location? Boston? London? Berlin? Hoboken?

Luckily, the 11th edition of the AMA Manual of Style recognizes that this struggle was indeed real, and the publisher’s location is no longer required for reference citations for books and edited books (3.12.8). Now the publisher appears directly after the italicized book title and is followed by the publication year. For example: Tinker R. Who in the World is Carmen Sandiego? HMH IP Company Unlimited Company; 2019.

Hopefully eliminating the publisher’s location from references will save you time during your editing process, time that can be better spent spanning the globe in pursuit of a jet-setting villainess…if you can find her.–Amanda Ehrhardt

The Temperature on Spacing for Degrees

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Tucked deep within the weighty 10th edition of the AMA Manual of Style were brief entries providing guidelines for reporting measures of temperature. In sum: writers and editors reporting Celsius or Fahrenheit should (1) close up spaces between numerals, degree symbols, and temperature units and (2) repeat the degree symbol and the unit when reporting temperature ranges. For example: 37.5°C-37.9°C.

Simple? Yes—with the possible exception of closing up the space between numerals and degree symbols, as many non-AMA publications include a space between temperature values and degree symbols, and the degree symbol was 1 of only 3 exceptions to the usual AMA style rule to add a full space between an Arabic measure of quantity and the unit of measure. (The other exceptions being the percent sign and the symbols for normal and molar solutions, often closed up in other publications.)

To separate or not to separate? That was the question.

The new (and even more comprehensive) 11th edition aims to ease any resulting separation anxiety, now calling for a full space between temperature values and degree symbols. Moreover, units no longer need be repeated when a hyphen is used. For example: 37.5-37.9 °C.

The 11th edition also makes more explicit that the degree symbol is not used with Kelvin values and highlights that relative temperatures should be expressed as higher and lower rather than warmer or colder.–Phil Sefton

Exhibit A

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There are times when authors question whether they really need copyediting; occasionally, when edits are especially light and authorial moods particularly dark, I even wonder if the idea of skipping it might even be right. But I am never swayed long, because to copyeditors, it is usually clear how tricky English can be, even in its smallest and seemingly simple parts.

Consider exhibit A: a.

English offers 2 indefinite articles, a and an, and the 11th edition of the AMA Manual of Style includes a simple-but-not-easy rule of when to use them: the a goes before consonant sounds and the an before vowel sounds. The hard part is that the sounds, not the written letters, are the deciding factor.

Because English is nonphonetic, words that start with written consonants (such as h) might begin with a vowel sound (as with hour), and those starting with a vowel may be said as an initial consonant sound (as with one). The only way to know the correct article to use is to know how each word is said aloud.

Medical writing further complicates this with prodigious abbreviations. Exactly half of the letters in the English alphabet, including 8 consonants, are said with initial vowel sounds; for example, an N is pronounced “en” and thus must follow an an when it occurs in acronyms such as NSAID. (The other 7 such consonants are F, H, L, M, R, S, and X.)

Making things even worse, acronyms that are pronounced as words (eg, LASIK) must be matched with the indefinite article that goes with their initial sound (in LASIK, “la-,” which means an a should be used), not the sound that matches the spoken letter (the “el” sound of L, which would go with an an). This means it is essential to know which acronym is said as a word and which as a mere cluster of letters.

It is a relief that nearly all of the letter names that start with consonant sounds (B, C, D, G, J, K, P, Q, T, W, Y, and Z) are for actual consonants, making the a their default article—except that, of course, Y is a consonant (said “ya”) and a vowel (“ee”) with a rather inexplicable spoken name (“why”), and…. well, you get the picture. The complexity never ceases.

Anyone can get this stuff wrong, even native English speakers. For authors using English as a foreign language, including those who largely write in rather than speak the language (and therefore do not sound it out much) and those whose native languages do not include indefinite articles (eg, Japanese, Hindi, Polish, many more)—this might be pretty hard to manage. For everyone, there are copyeditors. We hope to handle this and all the rules in our 1200-page style manual, from a to z.–M. Sophia Newman

Birthplaces and Social and Economic Descriptions of Countries

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There are more examples of bias-free language in the new edition of the AMA Manual of Style, including 2 new entries in the Correct and Preferred Usage chapter, one discussing the birthplace of study participants and the other describing countries in terms of their economic and social factors.

The first new entry discusses not using the term foreign-born. We see this descriptor all the time in studies describing participants who aren’t from the country where the study was conducted but this term may be considered derogatory and should be avoided.

The easiest solution is to say that the person was born outside the country of interest or born abroad. For example, for a study that took place in the United States, use “non–US born participants” or “participants born outside the United States.” Also, it’s preferred to use US or United States vs American or America for clarity.

The second new entry is a little trickier and refers to adjectives used to describe a nation, region, or group in which most of the population lives on far less money—with far fewer basic public services—than the population in wealthy countries.

There is no universal, agreed-on criterion for describing a country in terms of its economic or human “development” and which countries fit these different categories, although there are different reference points, such as a nation’s gross domestic product per capita or the limited nation’s Human Development Index (HDI) compared with that of other nations.

The appropriate term should be based on context and respectfully reflect a specific country’s economic and social situations. The AMA Manual of Style suggests limited-income, low-income, resource-limited, resource-poor, and transitional.

Avoid the terms first world/third world and developed/developing. The term third world is pejorative and archaic, and while developing might seem like an acceptable alternative, it too can be considered pejorative and insensitive to the many complexities of metrics used to measure economic, political, resource, and social factors.

Best practice is to avoid such general terms and use specific terms that reflect what is being compared, such as low-income or high-income for an article comparing countries based on measures such as gross national product per capita.–Tracy Frey

Variants for Mutation

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Other than in reference to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the anthropomorphic crime-fighting turtles who love pizza, there are few instances in which the term mutation, or any form of the word, has a positive connotation.

Because of this negative connotation and the confusion regarding the definitions of the terms mutation and polymorphism across disciplines, the Human Genome Variation Society recommends avoiding these terms.

The 11th edition of the AMA Manual of Style reinforces this recommendation, as well as the suggestion to instead use the terms sequence variant, sequence variation, alteration, or allelic variant.

In light of this recommendation, the term single-nucleotide variation (SNV) is more frequently being used than single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). To aid readers’ understanding during this transition, it is suggested that SNV be used at first mention, with SNP included in parentheses as follows: “…SNV (formerly SNP).” This should help authors and readers adjust to the recommended language.–Nicole FioRito

Welcome the 11th Edition of the AMA Manual of Style!

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We are pleased to announce the 11th edition of the AMA Manual of Style, now live at https://www.amamanualofstyle.com/ and shipping in hardcover in a few days.

The manual has been thoroughly updated, including comprehensive guidance on reference citations (including how to cite journal articles, books, reports, websites, databases, social media, and more), an expanded chapter on data display (for the first time in full color), a completely up-to-date chapter on ethical and legal issues (covering everything from authorship and open access to corrections and intellectual property), and updated guidance on usage (from patient-first language and terms to avoid to preferred spelling and standards for sociodemographic descriptors).

The section on nomenclature has undergone thorough review and updating, covering many topics from genetics and organisms to drugs and radiology.

The statistics and study design chapter has been extensively expanded, with more examples of usage and terms that link to a related glossary.

Chapters on grammar, punctuation, abbreviations, capitalization, manuscript preparation, and editing feature refreshed examples and new entries (such as allowance of the “singular they”).

The nearly 1200-page book is enriched by a variety of online features. For example, regular updates to address changes in style or policies will be featured in the Updates section. Any corrections will be made online so that you are always looking at the latest guidelines as you use the manual.

New quizzes will be posted to help new or continuing users learn to master the finer points of AMA style, and the units of measure calculator offers easy conversions between the SI system and conventional units, as well as the metric system.

We welcome questions and comments on the manual: write to stylemanual@jamanetwork.org or find us on Twitter (@AMAManual). We look forward to engaging with you. –Stacy Christiansen, for the AMA Manual of Style Committee

Breaking It Down

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When you pick up a book you haven’t yet read, do you immediately turn to page 1 and begin reading? Or, do you check out the front cover design to see if the book looks interesting? What about the back cover?

Most stories are broken down in many ways to hook the audience. It’s fairly standard that a book has a promotional blurb on the front cover, a tagline, a 1-sentence summary on the back, a slightly longer summary on the back, and, yes, more promotional blurbs on the back and inside the front cover. Perhaps you learned of the book through a social media post or through a review. What grabs your attention may not grab someone else’s, so breaking a story down in various ways makes it appeal to a larger audience.

The same can be done with scientific research articles. The main text typically follows the IMRAD format (introduction, methods, results, and discussion) to clearly and fully tell the story. The authors detail why they performed the research, how they did it and among whom, what they found, and what it means.

That story is condensed into an abstract, a brief summary that allows readers to determine whether they may find the full article interesting or useful. Should an abstract be too long or technical to pull a reader in, an article can have an even briefer key points section. This could be a bulleted list of important findings or, as in the JAMA Network journals, a list of the question, findings, and meaning of the research.

For social media, perhaps a single summary sentence is needed to fit the constraints of a character limit. For readers who prefer a more visual summary, especially through social media, a visual abstract can be useful. These are eye-catching depictions of the research, often using icons and very brief wording.

Twitter, JAMA (JAMA_current), January 17, 2020.

Medical editors may be tasked with reviewing, editing, or even writing some of these pieces. In doing so, a few tips might be helpful.

First, make sure the shorter piece is consistent with the main article. Numbers should match and any data in the shorter piece should be included in the main article.

Second, make sure the trimmed text doesn’t overstate the study’s results. For example, “This study suggests that X is associated with Y” is different from “X affects Y.”

Third, make sure the most important information is emphasized: “This [study type] examines [primary outcome] in [population].”

Fourth, remember the audience. The short items should be able to draw someone in to read the more technical information in the main article.

A journal article may be the culmination of an investigator’s life’s work or the end of a trial that has cost millions of dollars, which may make an article’s 1-sentence blurb seem measly. However, a patient may search social media to find information on a rare disease, and a post could bring the patient to the full article. A physician may scan key points to see if an article looks interesting enough to read fully. A student could review abstracts to find articles that are helpful for a research project. An investigator might use the full article to replicate the study or as a springboard for further research.

Each breakdown serves a purpose, promoting the right information to the right audience.–Shannon Sparenga

ME Without the MD

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One of the occupational hazards of being a medical editor is the inevitability of occasionally working on a highly technical, highly detailed manuscript on a topic about which you know nothing. You don’t need to have a medical degree to be a medical editor, but how do you edit a paper when you’re not sure whether the item under discussion should treated as a plural, or even as a noun?

Of course, an excellent place to start is the AMA Manual of Style, which can provide a general overview sufficient to navigate the complexities of many topics.

For example, you don’t need to know much about respiratory physiology as long as you remember to check section 15.16 (Pulmonary, Respiratory, and Blood Gas Terminology). You’ll be sprinkling cryptoglyphs like V̇, Pb, and v̅ in no time!

You also don’t need to know how to conduct an F test to know that when you see an F score, it should also include the numerator and denominator of the degrees of freedom in subscript (section 20.9, Glossary of Statistical Terms).

In addition to the searchable AMA Manual of Style, the modern age has also bestowed the gift of internet search engines to help decrypt topics of which you may have no knowledge (and had never previously needed knowledge of, for that matter). If you find yourself looking at a topic you’ve never heard of and the Manual doesn’t cover it, a few minutes perusing sites such as Google, PubMed, and Wikipedia can give you tentative grounds on which to make your stand.

But sometimes even all the treasures of the internet and your trusty AMA Manual of Style combined can’t help and you’re adrift on a sea of statistics, biochemistry, gene expression, or whatever your topical Achilles heel may be.

In such cases, it can be useful to think of a sentence like a math equation—you don’t need to know what the subject means, but if you can look at a sentence and know where the subject is, where the object is, and what kind of verb tense you need, you’re more than halfway there.

And, as always, you can and should rely on the author to clarify and correct as needed. The ultimate goal of your work is to improve the author’s work, and that can only be truly accomplished through teamwork.–Rebecca Palmer