In a recent editorial a plea was made for brevity in medical writing. A request is now made for greater care in the preparation of manuscripts. Many articles which are offered for publication in the Archives are of intrinsic value but are poorly constructed and carelessly written.
This communication refers not to style in medical writing, which is a matter of individual talent and experience, but to the technic of preparing manuscripts. The necessary information on this subject is given in a book by Fishbein entitled "Medical Writing."1 Every contributor to the Archives should be thoroughly familiar with this book, every word of which is instructive and much of which is entertaining. It contains information of value on the construction of original articles, charts, tables, bibliographies and illustrations. The use of the words "very," "marked" and "quite," for instance, would be curtailed by an author who had read this