When writing for a medical journal, the most important thing is to have your facts right. Your article is a scientific piece meant to further humanity’s understanding of medicine, not a literary essay hoping to score points for style and grace. With that being said, your piece will be a lot more effective if it’s well written. Nobody enjoys suffering through wordy or nonsensical prose, and some people might even abandon the article altogether after a few poorly-written paragraphs. That’s why you should work on your writing skills and thoroughly revise your piece before you submit. Here are four tips for making sure your medical writing is up to scratch.
Develop A Sound Structure For The Article
A skilled writer will always draw up a general outline before starting a piece. That way, they can make sure that all the arguments flow naturally from on point to the next. If you simply start writing without a general plan, your piece is likely to turn out lopsided or incoherent. You’ll put the ideas on the page in the same order that they appear in your head, not in the order that would make most sense to the reader. Some ideas will get too much time and attention, while others will be thrown in as an afterthought. All of these shortcomings will significantly detract from the effectiveness of the article.
Avoid Run-On Sentences
As far as style goes, run-on or overly-long sentences represent the most common mistake amateur writers make. Readers want information in simple, easily-digestible bites. If they have to reread a meandering, multi-clause sentence to understand the meaning, they’ll lose focus on the actual point you’re trying to make. With that being said, you shouldn’t make all your sentences short and choppy. A slew of short, one-clause sentences will only make the piece appear stunted and inelegant. The key is to vary the length of your sentences while avoiding painfully long sentences.
Try To Be Concise
Nobody enjoys excessive verbosity in prose. Just like we recoil from a speaker who likes the sound of their own voice, we’re quickly bored by a writer who’s too fond of their own sentences. There’s no need to use twenty words to describe something you could have evoked with a shorter phrase. With each and every sentence, try to parse your language down to the bare minimum. When planning your article, try to apply this same parsimony on a wider scale. There’s no need to repeat the same information twice or include extra facts that aren’t relevant to the central theme. Every paragraph should advance the reader’s understanding of the main idea.
Have Someone Peer-Edit Your Piece
Never submit a piece of writing if you’re the only one who’s ever seen it. We all have blind spots when it comes to our own work, and you’ve surely missed something in your article that could stand to be improved. Before declaring your work finished, run it by a friend or colleague. It can be nice to share with somoene who’s familiar with the topic, but even someone from outside the medical field can give writing pointers. The goal is simply to highlight areas where you could make last-minute improvements.
