8/8/23, 11:33 AM AMA FORMATTING

AMA FORMATTING
WRITING DETAILS

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AMA Style-Other Details

Objectives
This short lecture is meant to discuss some of the smaller details of AMA formatting that you will encounter in your capstone project. After completing this lecture,
you will be able to:

Correctly cite trademark names

Correctly cite the UW-L Statistical Center
Correctly refer to agencies and organizations in-text
Correctly use terms, units and numbers in the capstone project

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Properly citing trademarked names

If you are going to discuss a product that is trademarked, you must capitalize it in the sentence. No other form of citation is needed. You will most commonly see
this when discussing immobilization devices. Example: The patient was immobilized using a vacuum bag. I did not capitalize "vacuum bag" because it is not a
product name from a company. Example: The patient was immobilized using a Vac-Lok. Notice how "Vac-Lok" was capitalized in this situation because it is the
trademarked name of a product.

Citing the UW-L Statistical Center

If you used the UW-L stat center for help with your analysis, you need to credit them for their contribution to your study. The following excerpt is a sample of
acknowledgment given to them for a paper in the past:

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our thanks to Dr. David Reineke, Thomas Theisen, and Carsten Hiltgen of the UWL Statistical Consulting Center for their contributions
to the statistical analysis and interpretation of statistical results.

The acknowledgment should be written after the text and before your references page.

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Agencies and Organizations Abbreviations

Several different agencies and organizations use abbreviations as opposed to their full names

It is not uncommon for multiple agencies or organizations to have the same abbreviations so you must spell out an abbreviation before you can use the
abbreviation freely in text.
Examples of organizations you may use in your writing
Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG)
American Association of Medical Dosimetrists (AAMD)
Pages 459-472 in your AMA text contain a short list of common organization names

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Clinical, Technical and Other Common Terms

Terms
AMA style of writing allows for the use of abbreviations in the manuscript. Some terms are required to be spelled out at first use before the abbreviation can be
used and some terms that are widely accepted in the medical community don't require the full spelling.

Here are examples of terms you may use in your writing that are not required to be spelled out at first use:

BMI
GERD
CT
MRI
HIPPA

Pages 502-519 contain a nice list of terms that are recognized by AMA

Here are examples of terms you may use in your writing that do require to be spelled out at first use

Organs at Risk (OAR) IMPORTANT: Notice the "OAR" is not pluralized as "OARs" as most people commonly say the term. OARs imply "organs at risks"
which is not correct.
Monitor Unit(s) (MU(s))
Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT)
Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT)
Vx (volume receiving x dose such as V20 ,V5, V30 etc.; also note that the doses are listed as subscripts )

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Units
Most units that you will use in your writing are recognized by AMA and will not require a spelled out version before you can use the abbreviation.

Some of these units include:

Gy
cm                     
mm                   
MV
cm3      

When using these units in text, there should be a space between the value and unit. Example of incorrect formatting: 38Gy, example of correct formatting: 38
Gy.

**Notice how cGy or cc is NOT on the list of units recognized by AMA. You must spell this out before first use.

Pages 519-525 provide a list of other terms that can be abbreviated at first use

Numeric
Numbers (including years) are not spelled out in the text of a research article so use the numerical version.

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General rules for spelling out Terms, Units and Numbers

It is not uncommon for terms to be encountered first in the abstract. You would spell out the terms in the abstract and also again at first use in the
manuscript.
Once a term has been spelled out in the abstract and manuscript (at first use), you may refer to the abbreviation in subsequent uses UNLESS the term
begins a sentence. If you must use a term to begin a sentence, you must spell it out even if you have already spelled it out in text above. It would be
formatted like the example below:
Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy is becoming an increasingly popular treatment technique. (Notice how the abbreviation does not appear after the term
was spelled out here. This rule also applies to table and figure captions).

If you begin a sentence with a number, it must also be spelled out with the exception of a year. It would be formatted like the example below

Seventy-five patients were selected to take part in this randomized study.

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