Editorials

Putting on the style

Journal house style is for the benefit of readers; now everyone can access it

Imagine that your paper has been accepted by the BMJ. After the work of writing and revision, you are looking forward to seeing it in print and receiving the acclaim of colleagues. The proofs arrive. You settle down to read your hard-wrought proseand revel in how well it reads. Then you notice the "? to author" inserted here and there. To answer some of these queries, you turn back to your original and realise how much has been changed. You wonder what's been done to your paper. Was this really necessary?

Like every paper published in the BMJ, yours will have undergone scrutiny by a technical editor. These invisible professionals are the most exacting readers of the paper. Their scrutiny and revision adds value by making your paper clear, concise, and accurate. Their mission is to remove the obstacles that would hinder a reader's easy grasp of the message and details of the paper, while not distorting what the author meant to say. The readersdoctors of all specialties, or of none; native English speakers and non-native English speakers; members of the publichave reason to be grateful for this attention to detail.

Behind the work of the technical editors lies a powerful tool called house style. Evolved over many decades, house style has seeped into every fibre of technical editors' being during their long months of training. This training hones their critical skills, sharpens their suspicions, and develops an awareness of nuance. In the interests of consistency throughout the journal, technical editors learn to forgo personal preferences for abbreviations, American spelling, and exclamation marks.

Some of the principles of house style are standards of good writing; some can be robustly defended such as our eschewing of most abbreviations in a journal that is read by an enormous variety of readers; and others are admittedly arbitrary. But even the arbitrary ones can be justified on the grounds that we need to make a decision and stick to it: our readers probably wouldn't thank us for changes in spellings, capitalisation, and units of measurement between one article and the next. Aiming to promote clarity of thought and expression, technical editors embrace the use of first person pronouns, the active voice of verbs, and short sentences; at the same time they are ruthless with noun clusters, hanging participles, tautologies, and the many misuses of commas. And they allow very, very few hyphens.

The author's organisation of ideas is one element of style; another is to follow the rules of grammar (such as they are) and use words correctly: "the dressing of thoughts," as Dickens said. The style imposed by journal editors includes technical accuracyin the layout of tables, for example, or use of drug names. Technical editing also encompasses what in the days of hot metal typesetting was called "marking up the text" (for type size, headings, etc) but in the electronic era is called "coding." Further, it involves mundane processes like checking that percentages and numbers tally (so often they don't), figures are labelled correctly, and competing interests forms have been signed. An important component of house style is the many details for which alternatives exist: beta-carotene or  carotene? phase 2 trials or phase II trials? adrenaline or epinephrine? There is much to remember; fortunately, it's all written down.

Our house style is codified in the BMJ style book, which originated on a typewriter back in the mists of time and can now be found on the world wide web (www.bmj.com/advice/35.html). This alphabetical listing, amounting to some 233 pages, is a working document and is revised and added to as the need arisesat the rate of about a dozen decisions a week. Most of these decisions are about technical details; the essentials of BMJ style (www.bmj.com/advice/10.html) are less likely to change. Reaching a consensus involves determining a rationale and deciding which of the possibilities is the best and clearest. This often involves searching in other style books and reference sources that deal with spelling, place names, SI units, abbreviations, punctuation, or English usage (www.bmj.com/advice/bref.html).

"Good prose," said George Orwell, "is like a window pane." Technical editing reveals the viewand house style keeps the window clean.

Margaret Cooter, technical editor. 

BMJ