War of the words
BMJ 2013; 346 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f3021 (Published 15 May 2013) Cite this as: BMJ 2013;346:f3021
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This article has a parallel in the legal world.
In 1983 the Law Society Gazette published a letter from a surveyor, complaining about legalese in leases and asking if they couldn’t be written intelligibly. John Walton, a solicitor working in local government, replied by inviting readers to join him in forming an organisation devoted to plain legal English, subscription £5. He began by sending them a newsletter. The next year, Clarity held its first annual meeting. At the 1987 annual meeting, Richard Wydick of California, author of Modern Legal Drafting, was the guest speaker and became the 400th member.
Clarity is now an international association promoting plain legal language, with members in more than 30 countries. The newsletter has grown into a journal and a website, www.clarity-international.net. We hold regular meetings in London and an international conference every other year, to share ideas and inspiration for what is still a minority interest among lawyers. Membership (still only $35 a year) is open to anyone interested in plain language in the law.
Is there an equivalent for plain language in medicine? Is there a reader who would like to set one up? Clarity in the law is very important. Obscure legal advice is bad for business and undermines our rights. Obscure laws and court documents undermine the rule of law. But when medical documents are obscure, they can threaten life and health.
Daphne Perry
UK representative of Clarity
daphne.perry@clarifynow.co.uk
Competing interests: No competing interests
Brevity is the soul of wit, said the notorious windbag Polonius before denouncing Hamlet as mad. Churchill's apocryphal and legendary demand for battle plans to be summarised on a single side of "foolscap" (how appropriate!) would be all too welcome at weekends when I am speed-reading "peer-reviewed" journals for papers that will change my life.
Am I the only doctor/surgeon who cheats and reads only the abstracts without bothering to plough their way through pages of turgid text, just to filter out the occasional nugget of academic gold? Life's too short to analyse every table and set of dull results, let alone check if the multiple authors have used the Chi-squared and student's t-tests correctly!
Come on, fellow Philistines, let's have 'research' papers on a single page on the web rather than hundreds of lumps of expensive paper thud on the doormat each month!
It doesn't have to be dumbed down for maligned Orthopaedic surgeons - I have 7 A levels and 4 prizes from medical school so can out-qualify my less gifted anaesthetic colleagues any day of the week - but it should be succinct and clear for all to enjoy!
Competing interests: dumb Orthopaedic Surgeon!
Re: War of the words
Spence's article reminded me of a new word I recently encountered during my first shift on the labour ward.
"I've just examined this lady and she's definitely ARM-able", I heard an obstetrician tell a midwife. It had been some time since my O&G placement at medical school and I didn't understand immediately. I eventually worked out that it meant the lady had a cervix that would be suitable for an ARM (artificial rupture of membranes). Whilst I have been unable to find any official mention of this term in the scientific literature or in any obstetrics textbook, I've since discovered that it seems to be used routinely across the maternity community.
Inventing new terms, it seems, is part of the process by which we establish professional identity. A cynic might even suggest that creating a special code is one of the ways we confuse and alienate those outside our own specialty. Obstetricians are by no means the only guilty party here. Just ask an emergency physician what a 'Hasselhoff' might mean (1).
(1) Keeley PW. Pimp my slang. BMJ 2007; 335(7633):1295.
Competing interests: No competing interests