© 2003 American Thoracic Society
Renewed Plea to AuthorsAvoid AbbreviationsTo the Editor:I enjoyed your editorial (1) on the use of abbreviations. It comes on the heels of the "worst offender" in recent memory, the article by Elkin and coworkers (2) on histomorphometric analysis of bone biopsies in patients with cystic fibrosis. As a pulmonologist, my knowledge of the intricacies of bone morphometrics is pretty minimal; the vast number of abbreviations made this article impossible to read (Aj.AR, O.Pm/B.Pm, MLT, MP/B.Pm, and so on). I ended up skimming it, as trying to really understand it would have taken me a day. I strongly agree with you that authors should try to limit themselves to commonly used abbreviations (FEV1, FVC, and so forth). In earlier days, some journals had a box on the first page listing abbreviations. I know this takes up a bit of space, but certainly improved readability. I wonder whether it wouldn't be worth bringing this practice back.
Pediatric Respirologist Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Ottawa, Ontario, Canada FOOTNOTES Dr. Elkin was given the opportunity to respond to this letter but declined to do so. REFERENCES
From the Editor: Dr. Kovesi notes that the Journal has done a poor job in enforcing its own rules on abbreviations. He comments on our publication of an article by Elkin and coworkers (1) that contained a large number of abbreviations and lists four specific examples. The first abbreviation listed in Dr. Kovesi's letter is Aj.AR, which refers to adjusted apposition rate. Dr. Elkin and coworkers (1) used this abbreviation only at its point of introduction and it was not repeated subsequently in the text. The second abbreviation, O.Pm/B.Pm, refers to osteoid perimeter/bone perimeter. Again, Dr. Elkin and coworkers did not repeat this abbreviation after they introduced it; the abbreviation O.Pm/B.Pm might be confused with another abbreviation, OP/B.Pm, which Dr. Elkin and coworkers used in Table 2 to refer to osteoid perimeter. The third abbreviation, MLT, refers to mineralization lag time; Dr. Elkin and coworkers used this abbreviation twice later in the text after it was first introduced. The fourth abbreviation, MP/B.Pm, refers to mineralizing perimeter and it appears only in Table 2. Dr. Kovesi asks whether publishing a boxed list of abbreviations at the start of an article might be helpful. A glossary would have been of little help in the article by Dr. Elkin and coworkers (1). They used more than 40 different abbreviations, but most were repeated 3 or fewer times after their first use. Reverting back to a glossary distracts a reader from concentrating on the science in an article (2). It also takes time. Once an article has been published, it is the readers who make the greatest subsequent investment in the article—the time taken to read it. Our Instructions for Contributors point out that authors should not introduce an abbreviation that will be repeated fewer than 10 times in the article. Readers can cope with two or three different abbreviations in an article, but reading becomes exponentially more difficult with each additional abbreviation. The Journal does not enforce a limitation on the number of words permitted in an article. Accordingly, abbreviations can never be justified as a means of saving Journal space. We apologize to our readers for the burden imposed by the large number of abbreviations in the article by Elkin and coworkers (1). Dr. Farber (3) had previously exhorted us to strengthen our efforts in restricting the use of abbreviations. Clearly we need to do better.
FOOTNOTES Conflict of Interest Statement: M.J.T. is editor of the Journal and is responsible for enforcing its policies, including its policy on abbreviations. REFERENCES
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