An excerpt from the preface to the 10th Edition

What"s new in this edition? Below is a short response to a question that can only be answered fully through frequent use.

• A new chapter on medical indexes.
• A completely updated Nomenclature chapter, with 4 new subsections (molecular medicine, ophthalmology, psychiatry, and radiology), the latest nomenclature in many fields (eg, virology, chromosomes), molecular medicine subsections added to many fields (eg, cardiology, neurology), more material on complementary and alternative medicine, and a more international approach to drug nomenclature.
• Expanded, and now separate, chapters on manuscript preparation, visual display of data, and references. The References chapter includes almost all new examples, with about 50 examples of electronic references alone.
• A change in the policy for table footnotes from using superscript symbols to using superscript lowercase letters.
• A greatly expanded chapter on ethical and legal considerations, including just some of the following:
• New responsibilities for authors, including identifying contributions of all authors as well as substantial contributions of nonauthors.
• New policies on group authorship.
• Updates on conflict of interest, including requirements for complete financial disclosure, transparency of the role of the sponsor, and independent statistical analysis for industry-supported studies.
• New information on editorial freedom in the wake of the firings of the editors of JAMA and other general medical journals.
• New policies and procedures for journal editors, including correspondence columns, corrections, and the role of editorial boards.
• Updated definition of scientific misconduct, procedures for handling allegations of fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism and publishing retractions.
• New information on data sharing and open access.
• Updates on copyright and trademark, especially as they affect online publishing.
• New privacy concerns for patients in scientific publication.
• New case law on libel and suggestions for minimizing risk of libel.
• Revised guidelines on advertising, including online advertising.
• Updated information on author and editor relations with the news media and early release of information to the public.
• New subsection in the Grammar chapter, to include homonyms, idioms, colloquialisms, slang, euphemisms, and cliches.
• A decision to drop the commas previously used to set off "Jr" and "Sr."
• Inclusion of guidelines for capitalization of computer terms and intercapped compounds.
• Addition of many new terms to the Correct and Preferred Usage and to the Study Design and Statistics glossaries.
• New policy on abbreviation or expansion of state names.
• Revised policy on SI units and updated conversion table.
• New material in the statistics chapter on cost-effectiveness analysis and survey studies and requirement of clinical trial registration.
• Information on online editing and coding, with samples of a marked-up and coded page.
• Expanded typography chapter, with emphasis on improving readability.
• Updated and expanded publishing glossary and resources chapters.

Cheryl Iverson, MA
Chair, AMA Manual of Style Committee
Chicago, Illinois
October 19, 2006