BMJ writing style guide A-Z

Abbreviations 

• Do not use full stops in abbreviations: eg, am, pm, op, no, cf, ie, ed, etc or after Mr, Mrs, Prof or Dr
•  In most cases, abbreviations should be spelt out the first time they’re used. There are a few exceptions, which include very well known abbreviations, and abbreviations relating to tests that are common to healthcare professionals. For instance, if the audience is a group that would know what CPD and CME mean, then that is fine. But keep in mind that these two terms are not widely known outside of the education sector
•  Avoid using abbreviations for the first time in a heading. (This doesn’t apply to abbreviations that don’t require spelling out)
•  Abbreviations can be used at the beginning of sentences
•  Don’t use an apostrophe in plural acronyms/abbreviations (for instance, NSAIDs)
•  Also consider adding a glossary to longer documents, especially for non-technical readers

Capitalisation

• Use minimal capitalisation; only for names and proper nouns
• Avoid capitalising words unnecessarily (eg, job titles, etc.)
• Avoid ALL CAPS at all costs! (One exception is study names, which are often long abbreviated names that don’t need to be spelt out)
• Use sentence case everywhere. (Only capitalise the first letter of the first word in a heading – like you would in a sentence. Proper nouns are also capitalised)
• Also see Reference to race

Climate

We want to use terms that most accurately describe the world’s environmental crises. Instead of “climate change” the preferred terms are “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” and “global heating” is favoured over “global warming”, although the original terms are not banned.

Collective nouns

In general, collective nouns and organisations are singular: ‘the government is…’, ‘the company is…’, ‘the team is…’ 

But in the UK, sometimes plural usage sounds more natural: for example, with groups of people representing a body, such as sports teams: ‘Derby are thrashing Southampton 6-0’; ‘Southampton are utter rubbish’, etc.

Exclamation marks

Please limit your use of exclamation marks, except in quotes from other sources.

Essentials

• Be specific and use facts. Don’t use ‘corporate speak’, clichés and generic terms. Facts, figures and quotes make your writing credible and trustworthy
• Talk directly to your reader in an active voice
• Remove doubt. Choose can and will over words like could, should, would, might, committed to, and aim to
• Use verbs for momentum. Focus on what a reader can do or learn and use verbs to illustrate this. Understand is more powerful than gain knowledge, for example
• Cut it back. Keep your writing simple, concise and clear. Too many words will bury the essential messages
• Keep your flow of ideas clear. Present no more than one or two ideas in each sentence and paragraph

Gender/sex

• For both the UK and US versions, use ‘sex’ rather than ‘gender,’ unless there is possible contextual confusion with the act of sex (gender is a grammatical term referring to whether a noun is masculine, feminine, or neutral)
• Avoid ‘he’ as a general pronoun. Make the nouns (and pronouns) plural, then use ‘they’; if that’s not possible, use ‘he or she.’ If in doubt, please get in touch with the bmjbrandteam@bmj.com. Also see: address your reader

Lists

• Use lists where appropriate. They are excellent for splitting up information
• Use bullet points in lists (without full stops). These are better than numbers or letters as they draw your attention to each fact without giving you extra information to take in. See also, bullet points
• Use Arabic numerals in a right-hand bracket for numbered lists: 1), 2), 3), running on in the text
• Items should be separated by commas if simple, or semicolons if complex: ‘They discussed: 1) salaries, 2) staff levels, 3) rates of pay.’ ‘They discussed: 1) how people were paid; 2) the staffing levels anticipated by the end of the year; 3) how much clients would pay for different tasks’
• Use the Oxford or ‘serial’ comma in unnumbered lists. For example, Participants reported rash, headache, and fatigue’; not ‘Participants reported rash, headache and fatigue’
• For unnumbered lists of longer terms that may already have punctuation within them, use semicolons rather than commas to separate the items in the list

For example, The RCT compared three treatments: advice to exercise plus advice to consume a low-fat diet; advice to avoid fat, sugar, and salt; and placebo.

• For bulleted lists, start each item in sentence case. Sublists should be uncapitalised. An exception to this is if you have a straightforward bulleted list, then the list can be uncapitalised

Lower-middle income countries / LMIC / HIC / Global north and global south terms

There can be a new tendency to use Global South and Global North (or global south and global north) in favour of LMIC and HIC. Whilst there are good arguments for using global south in favour of LMIC/HIC, the most appropriate/representative suggestion seems to be about being more country-specific, but could prove problematic in practice. Another option is to use “in lower resource settings.” BMJ Global Health editors recently decided not to use any specific style in BMJ Global Health. Mostly because wherever you turn for a choice of preferred terminology, you encounter problems and inconsistencies and geographical inaccuracies, and subtle supremacist and hierarchical undertones. They wish to slowly move away from describing countries along these lines, except when necessary. Here is a recent paper in BMJ Global Health that tried to unravel the meanings of low-resource settings. 

Open access

• Write open access in sentence case, without hyphenation.
• In graphs and tables, use the abbreviated form of OA.
  [Please see here for an excellent example on how to do this well.]

Quotation marks

• UK: use ‘single quotes’ unless quoting directly from speech or from a publication
• US: use “double quotation” marks at all times unless quoting something within a quotation, when you use ‘single’
• Literal quotations should be exact, with punctuation and spelling matching the original

Avoid excessive use of quotation marks – they should never be used simply for emphasis. See: https://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/

Sentences (structure and tips)

• Use clear, direct style, avoiding colloquialisms, unnecessarily complicated language, and jargon
• Punctuate long sentences carefully. Use commas to aid clarity, to emphasise natural pauses, and to denote subordinate and defining clauses (see the entry on commas for more explanation)
• Shorter sentences are easier to understand and translate
• Keep in the active voice as much as possible
• If possible, but the most important point near the beginning of the sentence (readers’ attention peaks here)
• Remember that many of our readers do not have English as their first language: so keep it clean, simple, and clean
• Where possible, keep sentences short and straightforward. Much of our content is available on mobile phones and other handheld devices, as well as in print and on websites, so clarity and readability are crucial
• Check if long sentences can be split
• Chunk your copy into short paragraphs; one idea per paragraph

See also, commas

Values 

Weave them in where you can. Make the most of publicising what we stand for as a values-driven company. Find our values here.

We have a clear set of values. They define who we are and how we behave. 

They also give us the focus and direction to bring about our vision for a healthier world by sharing knowledge and expertise to improve healthcare outcomes.

It is our house style and grammatically correct to write our values all in lower case, for example, 

RIGHT – Our values

WRONG – Our Values

If you would like to incorporate the values into your documents, then you can find pre-designed artwork here.