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Patricia Lorimer-Lundberg
Loyola University of Chicago

JAMA. 1988;259(12):1809.

	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.

—The editorial policy of JAMA still seems to permit authors to use the nongeneric masculine pronoun as a "generic" term although JAMA's own Manual for Authors & Editors¹ cautions against such usage (section 1.14.B). I quote from a recent JAMA article: "I have predominately used he as a pronoun to embrace both genders: it does not indicate the gender of the patient or the physician."² Oh, but it does. Practical research has shown that such so-called generic language is interpreted differently by men and women. I refer to one classroom study that concludes: "When both men and women read the word he, a male interpretation (the default value) initially predominates. But if women are not to exclude themselves from what they read, they must do additional mental processing to transform the initial literal interpretation into one that includes them."³

As the number of . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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