Bill Franke’s Medical, Science, and Technical Writing Style Guide

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[Note: Dates in brackets are for latest entries.]

1. Brief introduction.

2. Formatting your paper for revision.

3. Alphabetical examples of how to and not to say things. These examples consist of the most common mistakes made by native English-speakers and Taiwanese writers of English. All examples include an explanation of why I think that it is better to say things in one way instead of another. Sometimes I offer two or three options. Sometimes the mistakes are grammatical errors, sometimes organization errors, sometimes logic errors, sometimes poor style choices, sometimes usage errors, sometimes word-choice errors, and sometimes word-order errors. You are always free to ignore my advice. If you do, however, more often than not the reviewers will complain about the English in your article. Sometimes I misunderstand what your sentence wants to say. When I do, please let me know my error and explain in clear and simple English what your sentence wants to say. Sometimes I am not familiar with what is not only standard jargon in your field, but also what is expected and what is not considered appropriate language. The jargon phrase “neuronal cell“, for example, is what I consider an inexcusable verbosity when all it means is “neuron“.

4. Read all the information you need to know about English Editing in Tainan, my editing service. [04 June 2009]

5. Visit my new writing-style blog on Microsoft Windows Live at: http://urlPass.com/474c

[This site is being built at the moment. I will rearrange it after I’ve finished it.]

[Revised: 05 June 2009]

Tags: medical writing, style, style guide, writing