Medical Writing

By Martin B. Edwards and Neville W. Goodman

Effective communication is the ultimate, but often daunting, purpose of any medical research or review. This book provides the practical information necessary to turn first drafts into concise, unambiguous text, without loss of individuality. Written by a consultant anaesthetist and an experienced medical editor, and also illustrated by an accomplished medical editor, all of whom are sympathetic to the problems and needs of medical writers, this book deals with the basic craft of writing, from choosing the best word or phrase to essential grammar. This expanded fourth edition includes many more words better replaced, and deals explicitly with the problems of writers whose first language is not English. Whether you are writing a simple clinical report or a thesis, supervising others, running a course on medical or scientific writing, or just want to develop your skills in written communication, this book is the ideal guide and reference. Clear, simple and precise, and illustrated with apt cartoons, this is an invaluable handbook.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1107628156
• ISBN13: 9781107628151
• Release Date: October 2014
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 382 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Extremely useful, and you don't have to actually be a medical writer

It gets off to a good start, albeit a somewhat wordy one, about the value of clear thinking and clear writing. This is followed by lists of misspelled words, misused words, unnecessary words, imprecise words... Get the idea? Since I don't suffer from any of these symptoms, an overlong list of treatments had the unintended effect of curing my insomnia. I apologize to the authors, whose effort is to be commended, but I don't recommend reading this cover-to-cover any more than I would recommend reading an encyclopedia or dictionary that way. Dip in as needed to save yourself hours of Googling, perhaps. I will, however, use what they had to say about Watson and Crick, who wrote about their Nobel-winning research on the nature of DNA with stunning simplicity and clarity.