Tip #2: 'Sight', 'Site', or 'Cite'?

The Author AID "Sentence of the Week" for this week was:

          When writing a journal article, be sure to site references correctly.

Reader's were asked to find at least 1 definite error in that sentence.

That got me thinking about publishing a post on the use of the three words, 'sight', 'site', and 'cite'. They all sound very similar but have totally different usages.


The correct word for the above example is 'cite', which means 'to mention' or 'to quote'. The correct sentence is:

         When writing a journal article, be sure to cite references correctly. 


'Site', on the other hand, means 'a place or location'. A 'website' is a location on the 'web' or the Internet.

The word 'sight' is used in relation to vision or seeing.

Here's an example:

         What a beautiful sight! This is a good site for a family picnic. I remember it being cited on a hiker's website. 

I hope you were able to detect at least 1 definite error in a sentence in this blog. If you did, I would love to hear from you.

About a Forthcoming Medical Writing Workshop

I was going through the Scientific Agenda for a medical writing workshop I am attending. Thought you might be interested to hear about it.

This workshop is part of the 28th ICON Meeting conducted by the Indian Cooperative Oncology Network (ICON). The workshop in on Friay, the 5th of April, 2013 at Mumbai. There are several sessions on:

• How to Write an Original Article
• Intricacies of Publishing
• PubMed Tutorial
• Workshop on Reference Management

Click on the link below to read the full agenda.

Scientific Agenda of the Medical Writing Workshop at the 28th ICON Meeting

Tip #1 Use a Citation Manager Software

In April this year, I am speaking to a group of oncologists in Mumbai about using reference software for their articles. Very few people in India currently use a reference software to manage their citations. But the trend is changing.

Last September I attended my first workshop on referencing software. Everyone present really loved the idea of having to do away with manual referencing.

Does working with reference and citations manually give you a headache? 

I use the EndNote library (ENL) citation manager. The price of the current X6 version is around 250 USD. It may sound like too much for a writer in India. But once you use it you will absolutely love it. You will forget manual referencing forever. That's for sure.

Some friends of mine use RefMan. They find that really helpful.

A friend of mine uses the free software Zotero and says it is equally good. I haven't used Zotero. Cannot comment on it.

Here's a tutorial about ENL that I found awesome. This is just a 7 min video. There are longer ones available on YouTube for those interested in the details.

Here's my medical writing tip #1. Use a citation manager and know the difference. If you cannot afford a paid software right away, start with a free software. Once you get the hang of it, you might want to use a paid one for the additional support it provides.

How do you manage your citations? Have you switched to a software or do you find manual referencing comfortable? What software do you use? If you are using a software to manage references, we would love to hear your experiences.

Medical Writing Workshop in Odisha

All India Medical Writers Association (AIMWA) recently conducted its first medical writing workshop in the eastern sector.

It was a two day workshop in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Public Health, Bhubaneswar (IIPH-B) with the support of the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR). The Indian Institute of Public Health is an initiative started by the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). It is a new institute...only about a couple of years into its existence in Bhubaneswar.

Dr Sanghamitra Pati of IIPH-B and I got to meet through the Author AID forum. Soon, we realized that both Dr Pati and I wanted to do something for our state, Odisha in the form of scientific writing workshop. While I was on a personal visit to Odisha last summer, she invited me to speak on "Writing a Scientific Manuscript and Getting Published". This was during a workshop on Research Methodologies at IIPH-B. It was short talk of about half an hour.

Ever since then we had been wanting to conduct a standalone scientific writing workshop at Bhubaneswar or Cuttack. Without a partial funding by ICMR, I am not sure we could have arranged for such a successful workshop.

IIPH-B offered its conference room as the venue. They also managed all the logistics. AIMWA helped in arranging for speakers on various topics.

The topics we touched upon during the 2-day workshop included:

• Medical Writing Basics
• Ethics in Scientific Writing
• Preparing for Publication
• Writing an Original Research Article
• Literature Search
• Referencing Styles and Software (demo)
• Writing a Narrative Review Article
• Writing a Case Report

We wanted to limit the seats to 25. But there was such an overwhelming response that we had to accommodate 40 participants. We hope to come back to Odisha again soon with a more extensive workshop that focuses on limited topics. 

Empowering Women Through Health Education

Yesterday, the Institute of Social Sciences inaugurated its celebrations for the 19th Women's Political Empowerment Day. The venue for the 2-day celebrations is the International Youth Center. This year's theme is 'Panchayats, Women and Health for All'. I was invited to speak yesterday on a health topic of my choice.

There were two plenary sessions for 24th April. The other speaker for the plenary session I was participating in, was Dr Madhulika Banerjee from Delhi University. Dr Banerjee spoke about mainstreaming  AYUSH and revitalizing local health traditions. The speaker during the second plenary system was Dr Meeta Pattnaik, MD, Transtek Clinical System. She was supposed to speak on the role of telemedicine in rural diagnostic services.

The sessions were being attended by nearly 400 women who have been recently elected into the Grama Panchayats. They represented 19 states of India. Both AYUSH and telemedicine were important topic for them.

I usually speak on cancer  and other non-communicable diseases. I titled my presentation for yesterday 'Empowering Women for Early Detection of Cancer' and spoke on how women can be taught to detect breast and cervical cancer at the earliest. I briefed them about the simplest screening methods for the two most common cancers among Indian women. I also spoke about HPV vaccine for prevention of cervical cancer. Here are some pictures from the session.

A Fine Writer ... Gone?

It's still sinking in ... slowly. He was one of the best writers in my team. 

We had done only a few projects together. But last week when my client from Europe got back with some repeat business, the only name that came to my mind was his. It had been a few months since we worked together on a project...but that was the only writer I could think of then. 

I tracked down his last mail to me and wrote to him about how happy the client was with the project we had done for her last year. That she wanted us to do her project this year too. And I was pretty clear who I wanted to delegate this project to. 

It had to be him. The young Indian student at Pittsburgh who had done her project last year too. I wrote to him. I usually write to a group of writers and ask them about their interest and availability for a particular project and then subcontract the project to one of them. But this time, I wrote only to him. I was sure I wanted him to write this one. 

He did not reply my mail yesterday. It is a weekend and I thought he was probably not checking his gmail account. So I wrote to him again this morning asking him to reply back by EOD today. But I don't know why I had no patience. 

He was a friend on Facebook. So I wrote on his Facebook Timeline asking him to check his mail and reply ASAP. I knew if he was not available it would take me some time to select another writer who would be just as good. I was also considering doing the project on my own if I did not get a positive response from him. 

Just then I happened to read other posts on his Facebook wall and it was clear to me that he was no more. He had left this world a few weeks back. I don't know what happened or how. 

I lost one of my best writers and a friend.

I will miss you. Rest in peace! 

Starting the New Year with a Medical Writing Workshop

This looks like a good start for a new year. Tomorrow I am going to Hyderabad for a 2-day medical writing workshops being conducted by Indian Society for Clinical Research (ISCR). The workshops are on 4th and 5th. There's an workshop on regulatory writing, one on ethics in medical writing and one on scientific manuscript writing.

I am conducting a workshop on 5th Jan on the basic skills of medical writing. This will be about the different forms of medical writing, planning to customize the writing as per the reader, how to carry out an effective literature search, how to organize the matter, and how to write and format the article. I will also be covering briefly about health writing for the web and some SEO tricks to use to get readers to read your article on the Web.

There are over 40 people who have registered for this workshop and I am hoping to have a good interactive session with them.

I also look forward to meeting some old friends at Hyderabad.