This Article  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Carl G. Kardinal, MD
Portsmouth, Va

JAMA. 1968;204(5):405.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor:—

I have been following your series of papers on medical writing, but I doubt that these articles will have much effect on improving the quality and clarity of clinical manuscripts. The problem seems more basic than one that can be solved by writing lessons. Yes, clinical papers are laiden with clichés, do lack style, and are burdened with long cumbersome sentences. And yes, they are forced to adhere to the introduction, methods, results, and discussion (IMRAD) form (Ann Intern Med 67:1117, 1967) which makes redundancy in expression inescapable. But I think a physician's ability or inability to express himself clearly in technical writing relates directly to his ability or inability to express himself in terms of thought content and speech. This in turn relates to his understanding not only of scientific discourse but also to his understanding of the arts, viz, literature, logic, and rhetoric.

The . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?