''AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors'' is the

style guide A style guide or manual of style is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of documents. It is often called a style sheet, although that term also has multiple other meanings. The standards can be applied either for gene ...

of the

American Medical Association The American Medical Association (AMA) is a professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. Founded in 1847, it is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was approximately 240,000 in 2016. The AMA's state ...

. It is written by the editors of ''

JAMA ''The Journal of the American Medical Association'' (''JAMA'') is a peer-reviewed medical journal published 48 times a year by the American Medical Association. It publishes original research, reviews, and editorials covering all aspects of biom ...

'' (''Journal of the American Medical Association'') and the JAMA Network journals and is most recently published by

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. It specifies the writing, editing, and

citation A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of ...

styles for use in the journals published by the American Medical Association. The manual was first published in 1962, and its current edition, the 11th, was released in 2020. It covers a range of topics for authors and editors in medicine and related health fields. The online edition also has regular updates (style points that have changed since the last edition or new guidance such as how to present new terms like COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 or address race and ethnicity in science publication), a blog (AMA Style Insider), quizzes, and an SI unit conversion calculator. A Twitter account is active at @AMAManual. AMA style is widely used, either entirely or with modifications, by many other

scientific journal In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. Content Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such as s ...

s (including medical, nursing, and other

health care journal Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organiz ...

s), in many textbooks, and in academia (for papers written in classes). Along with

APA style APA style (also known as APA format) is a writing style and format for academic documents such as scholarly journal articles and books. It is commonly used for citing sources within the field of behavioral and social sciences, including sociol ...

and

CSE style The Council of Science Editors (CSE), formerly the Council of Biology Editors (CBE; 1965–2000) and originally the Conference of Biology Editors (CBE; 1957–1965), is a United States-based nonprofit organization that supports editorial practic ...

, 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").

Content areas

# Types of Articles # Manuscript Preparation for Submission and Publication # References # Tables, Figures, and Multimedia # Ethical and Legal Considerations # Editorial Assessment and Processing # Grammar # Punctuation # Plurals # Capitalization # Correct and Preferred Usage # Non-English words, Phrases, and Accent Marks # Abbreviations # Nomenclature # Eponyms # Greek Letters # Units of Measure # Numbers and Percentages # Study Design and Statistics # Mathematical Composition # Editing, Proofreading, Tagging, and Display # Publishing Terms # Resources

Traits of AMA style

In general, AMA style strives for clarity and simplicity, and trusts the target readership to have a certain amount of knowledge and education. For example, AMA style dispenses with periods in abbreviations, on the grounds that they are unnecessary for meanings or clarity in all but very few contexts. AMA style also requires expansion of most abbreviations at first use, for clarity's sake. The ''AMA Manual of Style'' sets standards for mechanical style, but does not insist on invariability for its own sake in contexts where a bit of limited variation is logical, especially in higher-level style.

References

{{Authority control Medical publishing Style guides for technical and scientific writing Academic style guides American Medical Association 1962 non-fiction books