Watch your language

As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., the famous American physician and writer, wrote in his essay titled Scholastic and Bedside Teaching: “I would never use a long word… where a short one would answer the purpose. I know there are professors in this country who ‘ligate’ arteries. Other surgeons only tie them, and it stops the bleeding just as well.”

Here are a few more words and phrases to avoid:

• multiple for many
• interface for talk
• time frame, or period of time, for time
• great majority for most
• ongoing for continuing
• demonstrated for showed
• enhances for increases
• minimises for decreases
• optimal for best
• prior to for before
• following for after
• quantify for measure
• input, impact and dialogue – used as verbs

From Edith Schwager’s book Medical English Usage and Abusage (Greenwood Publishing Group/Oryx Press).