Guide From A Life In Editing - For Biochemical, Medical Writing, Copyediting, Proofreading, Indexing

Ever strayed into a job you wished you hadn't because you were just not that familiar with the terminology and housestyle? Or gotten yourself in too deep on the science side? Or just could not find that annoyingly elusive (bio)chemical/medical/science symbol and how it is represented in the text? Without wading through copious notes and thick dusty tomes, you can look it up in one easy guide.

Do you find it annoying when references aren't cited correctly? My passion for getting book references absolutely accurate really started in my PhD days, when, as you can imagine, trying to find that all-important research paper to help me write my thesis, and finding that a reference was incorrect, would drive me mad. Hence it started, a lifelong passion for compiling book references (ones you can't look up on PubMed or are difficult to find on the internet in general). Soon followed similar lists of helpful information you need when copyediting and proofreading (or writing and indexing) scientific and medical texts.

Following my PhD, moving straight into publishing, I started editing O and A level examination papers. The need to get things right, without ambiguity, really struck home, having just emerged from the high-stress exam-taking environment. (Oh, the trauma of sitting in exams, wondering what an examiner was really getting at, and pouring over every word to try to extract the correct meaning! And what about exam questions you couldn't answer because not all the information was there, aargh!)

Style was the next thing that was to be important to me as I started work, all eager and enthusiastic, at the Biochemical Journal. There, I spent more time reading the foot-thick style manual than copyediting and proofreading, and again later when I went freelance. Once bitten twice shy? Not me!

After a break from Biochemistry, I did a 4-year stint at Marine Engineering and a conference company (mostly editing IT and Telecoms books based on conferences), and many years of freelancing from home. Medicine was my next major port of call. Here I learnt about drug names (not always intuitive) and the many diseases and conditions affecting our fellow human beings. Sticking with medicine, the BMJ filled a gap in my medico-political knowledge quite nicely. I often edited their news pages for the lighter, shorter articles, and the exercise, as I tended to run across the office at 5 o'clock to get it to bed (being a weekly). Exciting stuff in the world of proofreading!

Then my passion was further strengthened at the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS), where every reference was checked by hand! I was in seventh heaven! Then my work at the British Medical Journal, although they wouldn't have it, showed me just how many references were published incorrectly. They had decided to stop checking individual references years ago, leaving it up to the author to get it right. When you actually take the time to look them up, so often they have errors, and not just people's names spelt wrongly. Sometimes there were fatal errors that meant you could not look them up! (Infuriating... much grinding of teeth.)

Finally, I started working full-time for a medical website (at Elsevier), also venturing into writing evidence for drugs and other treatments. An interesting sideline, as style, correcting references and my love of plain English writing all came together for me.

The guide is mostly based around my time at BMJ and the Biochemical Journal/Clinical Science, but having edited freelance and in-house for over 20 years, I've covered many different and diverse science subjects. And I can safely say that biochemistry is as hard as it gets in terms of style. Biochemistry and medicine, I would say, is a good basic science combo for this guide with housestyle, symbols, abbreviations, book references and lots more.

Now for my next trick: guides on other topics: Dentistry? Microbiology? You say the topic, and I'll produce the guide.

God Bless heavy science!


Happy hunting and editing.

Contents


Biochemistry and Medicine:


Housestyle


Abbreviations


Terminology used


Biochemical and equipment companies and software providers and their locations


Common binomia


Book references


Journal Abbreviations


Publishers and their locations

Dr Debra Goring, 7 New Pound Lane, Mereworth, Maidstone, Kent ME18 5QZ


Email: debragoring@yahoo.co.uk