Working with a style manual edition
An edition number identifies a style manual's starting text, but later printings and online updates can change its guidance. A printed book, a corrected printing and a continuously updated online edition may therefore give different answers.
Changes between editions
The AMA Manual of Style grew from a 68-page in-house document in 1962 to a manual of more than 1,200 pages in its eleventh edition. Its tenth edition appeared in March 2007, and its eleventh edition in February 2020. A 2019 preview had scheduled the eleventh edition for that year.
The tenth edition added more than 300 pages, a chapter on medical indexes and nomenclature subsections on molecular medicine, ophthalmology, psychiatry and radiology. Manuscript preparation, references and visual presentation of data became separate chapters; grammar gained homonyms, idioms, colloquialisms, slang, euphemisms and clichés. More descriptive page headers and an expanded index were intended to make the manual easier to use.
The edition addressed online submission, review and publication through at least 50 online-reference examples, computer terminology, online editing and coding, typography and updated publishing and resources glossaries. Its expanded ethics coverage included group authorship and contributions, conflicts of interest, editorial independence, misconduct, data sharing, open access, intellectual property, libel, privacy, advertising, media relations and early public release. Eponym policy remained unchanged, while punctuation retained largely the same policies with additional examples. Usage and statistics glossaries added entries including adherence/compliance, participant/subject, chief complaint/concern, impaired/intoxicated, survivor/victim, C statistic, imputation, missing data and propensity analysis; publishing terms added blog, bot, cookie, e-commerce and spider.
The eleventh edition removed the indexing chapter, combined design, typography and editing, and added online links down to the fifth level of subheading. Its study-design and statistics coverage described 20 study designs with reporting guidelines and a glossary covering 21 types of bias, with additions including cluster randomisation, Mendelian randomisation, mediation analysis, difference-in-difference analysis, forest plots, the I² statistic, equivalence and noninferiority. Its nomenclature chapter had 18 subsections, with a substantially revised genetics section, while the publishing glossary removed CD-ROM and fax and added cloud and IP address.
The eleventh edition added or expanded practical guidance in these areas:
- Crediting authors, contributors and collaborators.
- Providing conflict-of-interest information for authors, reviewers and editors.
- Handling different kinds of corrections.
- Using indefinite articles.
- Discussing scientific content on social media.
- Protecting research participants' rights.
- Protecting patient privacy in publication.
- Differentiating and understanding reporting guidelines.
- Presenting P values, effect sizes and estimates of error.
- Using or omitting hyphens.
- Using socioeconomic terms.
- Discussing addiction.
Its visual examples expanded to include spaghetti plots, genetic heat maps, clinical images, survival curves, dot plots, individual-value plots, forest plots, funnel plots, hybrid graphs, network maps and multipart figures, presented in colour. Its resources added guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics and the ICMJE, and its technical coverage included XML and the JAMA Network's single-source workflow.
Online changes within an edition
The AMA manual's online edition launched in April 2009. It was to include the print content, incorporate corrections and note updates or explanations when style policies changed. Its launch features included crosslinking, search in context, live links, an SI conversion calculator, a browser search toolbar, Word of the Month, Tip of the Month and self-quizzes linked to supporting passages.
The personalised My Style layer, added in early 2010, allowed up to 15 saved searches, bookmarks and annotations to words, phrases or sections. The online service then offered monthly quizzes, Word Corner and Editor's Tip, prompt correction of errata and online questions and answers. Planned 2011 updates included the ICMJE conflict-of-interest form, online advertising policies and a social-media presence. By 2019, updates were posted on the manual's website, with style questions taken through its Twitter account and scientific-communication topics discussed on the AMA Style Insider blog. In 2020, online virus-nomenclature guidance had already added COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2; quizzes were being revised, an introductory video was available and monthly podcasts were planned.
Online corrections can change an answer found in print: the AMA online discussion of multivariable and multivariate corrected the previous print edition's statement that they were synonymous.
A larger revision followed the printed eleventh edition: the committee reassessed race-and-ethnicity guidance in spring 2020, published an initial update for public feedback in February 2021 and published its final revision in JAMA on 17 August 2021. A week later, the revised content was freely available in the online manual. In 2023, further revisions were in progress for sex and gender, sexual orientation, age, socioeconomic status, ability and people with diseases, disorders or disabilities; some interim guidance appeared in JAMA Network instructions for authors.
Finding material in a specified edition
The tenth edition's index directed a compound question about special issues, supplements and peer review to three separate sections:
| Subject | Tenth-edition location |
|---|---|
| Special or theme issue | Section 3.11.7, page 49 |
| Sponsored supplements | Section 5.12.4, page 283 onwards |
| Peer review | Section 6.1.3, page 304 |
An editor using that index found it effective for this question but could not find entries for superscripts or ZIP codes. A medical editor also valued the tenth edition's indexing for quickly locating problems and possible responses, particularly in its expanded ethics material.
The CSE seventh edition
Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers first appeared in 1960; its seventh edition, published in June 2006, had 658 pages. It covers scientific papers, journal articles, books and other publications, defining publication style through punctuation, abbreviation, capitalisation, symbols and referencing. Its four-part structure is:
- Publishing Fundamentals: about 35 pages on publication policies and practices, copyright and publication types, with references to guidance such as AMA and ICMJE.
- General Style Conventions: about 160 pages in 11 chapters on alphabets, symbols, punctuation, spelling, capitalisation, abbreviations, prose and word choice, numbers, units and statistics.
- Special Scientific Conventions: about 235 pages on subjects including chemical formulas and names, drugs and pharmacokinetics, taxonomy, structure and function, genes, chromosomes and related molecules, alongside astronomy and earth sciences.
- Technical Elements of Publications: about 177 pages in six chapters on books and manuscripts, references, tables, figures and indexes.
The prose chapter includes about ten pages on imprecisely applied words; the gene-nomenclature chapter illustrates conventions with the cytochrome P450 family and human gene nomenclature. Each chapter ends with supporting references. Seventh-edition additions included the responsibilities of authors, editors and peer reviewers, copyright practices, electronic and print publication, and British and American styles, organised by subject as disciplinary boundaries became less distinct.
A 2013 review distinguished the rapidly changing publication-policy material in Part 1 from the other conventions and advised consulting newer guidance on those policies, seven years after publication.
Printings and annually revised guidance
Printing can matter within a new edition: a 2010 conference recommendation favoured the APA manual's second printing because it corrected numerous errors in the first. The manual was also supported by online tutorials, courses and supplements.
The European Association of Science Editors' Guidelines for Authors and Translators of Scientific Articles to Be Published in English were updated annually in 2014, when the revision incorporated amended ICMJE authorship guidance and the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment. They were then available in 21 languages, with volunteers sought to translate them into further languages.