And they always change with new releases.

Loitering unobtrusively in section 2.10.15, Preferred Citation Format, for example, is a change in citation style. Whereas ninth edition AMA discounted issue numbers in journal citations (except for special issues or issues with nonconsecutive pagination), tenth edition embraces them, even including issue numbers in the handy summary of Minimum Acceptable Data for References (section 3.4). Authors and editors working in AMA style strike these out of final manuscripts effortlessly, automatically, without even thinking about it. Now they’ll have to remember to call for them where they’re missing and leave them unmolested where they appear.

According to 19.2.2 in the tenth edition, common fractions are expressed with hyphenated words, whether the fraction is used as an adjective or a noun; in ninth edition AMA style, hyphens are only used if the fraction functions as an adjective modifier to a noun. Small change, it’s true, but any change will be an important one for writers and editors working within AMA guidelines.

And, of course, there are other changes too, which we will detail for you in the coming months.

Semicolons are often used to separate items in a series, especially when those items follow a colon (as in the example above). In most of those cases, however, the use of semicolons is a poor style choice.

In our example above, no colon is required after the word of—it’s entirely unnecessary, in fact. Where punctuation breaks up otherwise perfectly smooth syntax, that punctuation is a very bad idea. Punctuation marks are intended to ease reading and sometimes signal logical relationships, and in this example, the words (all by themselves) are perfectly clear:

Questions… will highlight audience understanding of current clinical guidelines… (no punctuation necessary.)

With the colon gone it may be easier to see that the semicolons are not the best choice of punctuation either: why use semicolons instead of commas to separate simple items in a series?

Semicolons do not, as a rule, separate serial items. The only exception involves serial items that already have internal punctuation.

Necessary Semicolons
The following four riders have won the Tour de France five times: Jacques Anquetil, France; Eddy Merckx, Belgium; Bernard Hinault, France; and Miguel Indurain, Spain.

At the end of round one, total points scored are as follows: France, 4; Great Britain, 6; Germany, 5; and Italy, 8.

Here are items in a series, each item consisting of a Tour de France winner and his corresponding country, in the first example, and a country and corresponding numeral in the second. In both cases, each pair is already separated by a comma; therefore, each serial item is set off with a semicolon. Otherwise, you’d have no less than 7 commas in one sentence, which is more than anyone can bear.

You were taught to double space between sentences in your typing class, and the practice did, at one time, make sense for typists lacking modern word processing software. They placed two spaces between a final punctuation mark and the next sentence in order to ease reading by helping the eye distinguish sentence breaks, and for some reason, typing classes never quite kept pace with technology.

Few of us give any thought whatsoever to spacing in typography—to the fact, for example, that irregular letter spacing is an essential component of legibility for roman type. In the sentence I just typed, for example, I placed three nonspaced hyphens between the words typography and to in order to simulate what’s called an em dash, a mark of punctuation that precedes an interrupting clause in a sentence. WordPress will change these unspaced hyphens into the em dash I’m looking for, and if you look closely you’ll see a wee bit of space on either side of the dash. It’s called kerning. Most of our word processing fonts calculate all of this for us (with more or less success), making sure the distance between each letter (or mark of punctuation), each word, and each sentence is optimal for easy reading. Old fashioned type setters had to do it all by hand.

So forget what you were taught in high school typing class about double spacing between sentences. It was good advice in the 19th century but doesn’t really apply to the 21st.

Is the word regard singular or plural in constructions like the one above?

Regard means attention or consideration, and these are not nouns we normally count. One attention, two attentions: attention paid to something, or attention given, will probably never take a final -s. You may pay close attention a number of times to a weaving car on the road in front of you, but you’re not paying attentions to a crazy driver. You’re being careful.

No final -s.

I suspect people say (and write) with regards to and in regards to because they’re thinking of the plural construction used for greetings, as when you say, Send Barbara my regards, will you? And this is a perfectly legitimate exception to the no final -s rule.

But in the strictest sense, this isn’t an exception: regards (meaning greetings) and regard (meaning attention/consideration) are two different words. The second one never takes a plural form.

So make a habit of using in regard to (or simply concerning) and with regard to. It makes a difference.

Examples:
physiologic or physiological
biologic or biological
psychologic or psychological
prophetic or prophetical

First the suffix: -ic in English answers to -ic and -ique in French, -icus in Latin, and -ixos in Greek. It’s one of many adjective suffixes in the English language (-al, -ent, -ive, -ous, -ful, -able, and so on).

Most adjectives that end in -ic have corresponding (or collateral) forms with -ical, but it doesn’t follow that both forms are preferred or that they even equate in meaning. In fact they sometimes don’t.

Politic and political, for example, are two different adjectives, the one indicating a kind of shrewdness (artful, tactful, judicious), the other referring to the government, to affairs of the state (famously artless and ill-advised). Historic and historical, both adjectives, have quite different meanings, as do economic and economical.

It is a historical fact, for example, that Wilkins Publishing was recognized by the State of Georgia in 2006, but this was hardly historic. But for a handful of people, it went entirely unnoticed. And the economic policy of governments is rarely economical: bureaucrats aren’t frugal, after all, but big, big spenders. Choosing the right suffix for the adjective matters.

So the choice of the -ic or the -ical is often a very important one, and sometimes the only way to know which of the two forms is correct is to look them up in a reference work. In some instances, either form (-ic or -ical) is perfectly acceptable (both forms are called equal variants). In that case, you simply choose the form you want to use and employ it consistently. But in other cases, one of the two forms will be preferred.

If you look up pathologic in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Collegiate Dictionary, for example, you will find the main entry is pathological and the variant form appears as “also pathologic.” In M-W Collegiate, equal variants follow the word or and secondary variants follow the word also. Thus, in the case of pathologic, the preferred form is pathological.

It’s probably safe to say that the -ic form usually wins out over -ical, but the only way to know for certain is to choose a reference work and then use that reference work consistently. Not all dictionaries are the same, so skipping from one to the other can contribute to inconsistent style.

Instead, he’d need to employ a verb like check or query (both of which are also nouns, by the way): Use our secure Web site to check the status of your travel arrangements on the day of the conference.

Of course, he has also gone from 16 to 19 words–check is inserted as the new verb and status will need to be coupled with the definite article “the” and the possessive “of.” Despite using those three additional words, however, the purist hasn’t said anything more. He is using status as a noun, yes, but someone might object that this linguistic purity is achieved at the expense of efficiency.

Sometimes in a design layout, for example, you may only have room for 16 words (19 words may introduce an unwanted line break or fail to fit properly in a graphic element). Sometimes in an e-blast, you will need to use the least amount of words in order to reach the largest number of readers.

Regardless, successful writers know the boundaries that separate nouns from verbs: words have meaning and function. If you want to be an effective communicator (or improve your writing generally), then you will need to master them both. But this does not mean that successful writing always follows the rules: the very best writers know both the rules and when to break them.

Avoid the plural construction.

Because the noun insight means clear understanding, it doesn’t lend itself well to counting. Understanding, comprehension, cognizance (or cognisance): we don’t think of these as countable nouns either. We don’t usually say, for example,

For the same reason, we shouldn’t thank people for their insights.

Insight is not a countable noun but a power of clear thought. People don’t have an insight, or two insights, or three: they may, however, have a solution, or two contributions, or even three spectacular ideas, but it’s their singular insight that makes those countable things possible.