AMA Manual of Style

AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors is the style guide of the American Medical Association. It is written by the editors of JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) and the Archives journals and is most recently published by Oxford University Press. It specifies the writing and citation styles for use in the journals published by the American Medical Association. The manual was first published in 1962, and its current edition, the 10th, came out in 2007. It covers a breadth of topics for authors and editors in medicine and related health fields. The online edition also has updates (style points that have changed since the last print edition), a blog, monthly tips from the editors, quizzes, and an SI unit conversion calculator.

AMA style is widely used, either entirely or with modifications, by hundreds of other scientific journals (including medical and other public health journals), in many textbooks, and in academia (for papers written in classes). Along with APA style and CSE style, it is one of the major style regimes for such work. Many publications have small local style guides that cascade over AMA, APA, or CSE style (for example, "follow AMA style unless otherwise specified herein" or "for issues not addressed herein, follow AMA style").

Overall, AMA style is clean, is minimalist (for clarity/simplicity), and trusts the readers to have a certain amount of intelligence and education (which the target readership does). For example, AMA style dispenses with periods in abbreviations (which are unnecessary for meaning's or clarity's sake in all but very few contexts) and requires expansion of abbreviations at first use (which ensures clarity). However, it allows a defined subset to be excepted (which prevents ungainliness) and, where appropriate, often allows several, sensible options for editors (that is, it sets standards for mechanical style, but also does not insist on invariability for its own sake in contexts where a bit of limited variation is logical, especially in higher-level style).

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