Abstract
I may be beating an old drum here, but as professionals, we should aim to communicate accurately, briefly, and clearly—the ABCs of communication. As I’ve said in previous editorials,3,4 it behooves us to avoid creating confusion by the use of jargon or scientific terminology.
Some scientific terms have synonyms, and one or the other term is used by personal preference or by habit. An example is autopsy or necropsy (autopsy: to see for one’s self; necropsy: to examine after death). Further to the recent article in Veterinary Pathology, 2 I have followed suit and use “autopsy” or “postmortem examination” in preference to “necropsy,” in support of improved client communication and consistent with the ongoing One Health agenda. The term “autopsy” is better understood by those to whom we need to explain the term “necropsy,” including animal owners, livestock producers, trainers, insurance agents, and lawyers.
One of the most common changes that I make in manuscripts is distinguishing between the terms “diagnose/diagnosis/diagnostic” and “detect/detection”—words that are not synonyms but are often used loosely as such. Diagnosis: “1. the determination of the nature of a case of disease; 2. the art of distinguishing one disease from another.” 1 “Detect,” on the other hand, is “to discover or determine the existence, presence, or fact of” (Merriam-Webster, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/detect). Hence, diseases or conditions are diagnosed, whereas agents, hazards, or products (bacteria, fungi, viruses, chemical analytes, antibodies) are detected. Although many of us work in “diagnostic” laboratories, and we have the unique capacity to make diagnoses of disease (e.g., by anatomic and clinical pathology), the bulk of our output is often the result of the detection of agents or their products (e.g., by microbiology, serology, toxicology) rather than diagnoses.
As I screen incoming manuscripts, and later mark-up manuscript revisions for authors, I strive for consistency of language and adherence to international standards. As you will note in our JVDI Instructions to Authors (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/societyimages/jvdi/JVDI%20Instructions%20to%20Authors%202015.pdf), we refer prospective authors to various international standards—“names of infectious agents should follow the current published standards for viruses (ICTV, International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, http://www.ictvonline.org/), bacteria (list of prokaryotic names with standing in nomenclature, http://www.bacterio.net/, or bacterial nomenclature, https://www.dsmz.de/bacterial-diversity/prokaryotic-nomenclature-up-to-date.html), and fungi (Species Fungorum http://www.speciesfungorum.org/ or Mycobank http://www.mycobank.org/)”—as well as the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html).
Current names of bacteria remain an ongoing challenge as taxonomists classify and reclassify based on both phenotypic and genotypic properties. I’ve seen Corynebacterium pyogenes morph through Actinomyces pyogenes to Arcanobacterium pyogenes, to come to rest (currently) at Trueperella pyogenes. We changed various Chlamydia species to Chlamydophila for several years, but have now reverted back to Chlamydia. 5
The above are but a few of the “editing conventions” used by JVDI editors to maintain a uniform product that is easily understood by readers. These conventions will no doubt continue to evolve.