Tapping Twitter to brush up on @AMAManual style

Emma Goldsmith, Madrid, Spain

Leafing through a print style manual used to be a good way for language professionals to chance upon writing tips and strategies they were unfamiliar with or had forgotten. But today’s online formats make serendipitous word encounters less likely.

To compensate, I follow Twitter accounts populated by publishers of style manuals and dictionaries, learn on the fly from their tweets and keep up with topical discussions on style. One example is @AMAManual – an account curated by representatives of the AMA (American Medical Association) Manual of Style.

This talk will give attendees a bird’s-eye view of the AMA Manual of Style*. I will introduce the style manual itself and then share some rules and recommendations tweeted in the past year by @AMAManual and, in particular, their replies to questions sent in by authors and editors. I will cover tweets that jogged my memory, clarified doubts, highlighted updates in the latest edition, and a few that simply made me smile.

The presentation will be of particular interest to fellow medical translators and editors. Colleagues working in other fields may also enjoy hearing what @AMAManual has to say about general-interest topics that have an impact on everyone’s style.

*Christiansen S, Iverson C, Flanagin A, et al. AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors. 11th ed. Oxford University Press; 2020.

About the presenter

Emma Goldsmith is a Spanish-to-English freelance translator who originally trained as a registered general nurse in London. She writes a blog called Signs & Symptoms of Translation about medical translation and SDL Trados Studio. Emma currently serves as MET’s Chair.