Technical terms

Medical vocabulary needs to convey the same meaning to writer and reader. The parts divide by the question about a term: how medical vocabulary works, where names come from, how to define them, whether they suit a reader, and which clinical distinctions editing must preserve. Everyday word choice, abbreviations and capitalisation, and meaning across languages belong to neighbouring concerns.

• Medical English and its vocabulary — research on medical discourse, degrees of technicality, vocabulary knowledge, spelling, publishing senses and misleading word pairs
• Where medical names come from — classical roots and how they are taught, origins in languages, places and people, eponyms and medical emblems
• Defining a term so the reader shares its meaning — deciding what needs definition, choosing a kind and method, fitting it to the project and testing it
• Technical terms and jargon: testing a term against its reader — keeping, explaining or replacing terms, recognising jargon, and handling foreign phrases, coinages, shorthand and slang
• Keeping a clinical distinction exact while editing — precise wording for signs and symptoms, conditions, relapse and refractory disease, drugs and regimens, severity, doses, outcomes and study periods