Clinic Writing Guidelines

Every year, I find myself correcting the same kinds of mistakes and clumsiness in written clinic documents. This Web page is an attempt to highlight the more common errors, so that you can avoid making them before I see your prose.

NOTE: When I return a marked-up document to you, every clinic member should review all of the markup, even the parts written by other people. One of the best ways to learn to write better is to see changes that tighten the writing and remove verbosity. Reviewing editorial corrections to other people's sections will help you improve your own writing.

Also, as you review my markup check off each change as you make it in the source document, so that you can be sure that you haven't missed any changes.

Finally, note that I use standard proofreading marks. You can find many explanations of those marks on the Web. If you don't understand one of my notations, or can't read it due to my poor handwriting, ASK ME. Don't just ignore the ones you don't understand.

The Only Absolute No-No

There are lots of writing mistakes that bug me. However, there is only one that I consider completely, utterly inexcusable in all cases: failure to run your document through a spell-checker. I can forgive difficulty with homonyms, but please remember that I am the author of ispell, so have the decency to spell-check your document immediately before you submit it to me.

General Guidelines

Things to Study

There are a few areas that are moderately difficult to deal with, but that need to be done right if you want your prose to communicate well. Most of them are well covered by the Chicago Manual of Style, which I look to as an authority on all questions of English writing. You can essentially always win a writing dispute with me by pointing to CMOS as a source.

Areas worth of special attention (i.e., you really should read the whole CMOS section) include:

• Hyphenation. (CMOS Sections 7.82 through 7.89 are all highly instructive, but 7.85 is the most important). Professor O'Neill's excellent example comparing an "acting department chair" with an "acting-department chair", and my own of "small write cost" vs. "small-write cost", are well worth keeping mind at all times.
• Commas, in CMOS 6.18 through 6.56 (yes, this is a long section). (But it's fair to note that good use of commas requires judgment and extensive experience.)
• "Which" versus "that"; see also 5.58 through 5.63.

Quick Rules

• Globally replace "in order to" with simply "to". (There are some very rare exceptions.) Likewise, replace "as well as" with "and", and "utilize" (and its variations) with "use"
• Avoid using "as" to mean "because", as in "We went to the movies today as Fred went golfing." "As" can often mean "at the same time as"; here, did we go to the movies because Fred was golfing or merely while he was out? Using "because" avoids this ambiguity.
• Avoid the use of "may" to mean "might". For example, in "The user may exit early by pressing 'Cancel'", are you saying that it is possible that the user will exit early, or that the user is permitted to exit early? Use "might" to express possibility (which is nearly always what you're likely to intend), and reserve "may" to express permission. Even better, use "is permitted to" for permission, to eliminate any ambiguity.
• In the same vein, watch out for "can" ("is able to") versus "could" (might choose to).
• Place a comma before the "and" or "or" in compound lists, such as "Our software provides reliability, usability, and economy." (This is sometimes called the "Oxford comma".) The British approach of omitting the comma can introduce ambiguity. For example, "At the dinner party I met Bob, Carol and Ted, Fred and Alice and John." In the British form, it's impossible to tell whom Alice came with. If you habitually include all the commas, there's no question. See CMOS 6.19. (Wikipedia has a more extensive discussion that carefully avoids taking a position—but I expect you to include the comma.)
• "This" is not a pronoun. Don't write "We observed that the sky is never blue during rainstorms. This is because the cloud cover is gray." Instead, clearly specify what you're referring to: "This color change is caused by the gray cloud cover."
• Lawyers notwithstanding, in English "or" is inclusive, so the phrase "and/or" is simply incorrect. Use "or"; if you mean exclusive or use "or else". (Also, remember that the slash character isn't a word at all, so don't use it as shorthand for "and" or "or".)
• In good English writing, nontrivial words aren't repeated. Find synonyms, or replace repeated nouns with pronouns. For example, instead of "If the user wishes to leave the menu without making a selection, the user should press the ESC key to close the menu", try "If the user wishes to leave the menu without making a selection, they should press the ESC key to close the dialog." Even better, get rid of verbosity: "To leave the menu without making a selection, the user can press ESC."