Liz Wager on the definite article
Martin Fenner
Saturday, 14 February 2009 09:37 UTC
Liz Wager over at the British Medical Journal blog talks about the use of the definite article in medical writing. She is rightfully confused why people “get a headache” or “died from the plague” but not “get the cancer” or “get the AIDS”.
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Replies
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Yes, that is interesting, isn’t it? I’m wondering if we specify ‘a’ headache because it is one of many varieties; while ‘the’ implies a shared familiarity amongst the speakers, as well as a sense that it is a prevalent illness. For instance if someone had died of ‘a’ plague, I think I would assume it was an unspecified or undiagnosed one; however if he died from ‘the’ plague I would assume it was the one prevalent at the time.
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Another thought…
Without any sort of article at all – if someone had died of plague – I think that actually carries a lot less information in itself and would depend on context.
This is really interesting! Thanks Martin.
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Thanks, Martin.
My introduction to the writing of Liz Wager was here in 2006.
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Subediting a paper written by a Japanese author is interesting. There are no definite or indefinite articles. The authors who don’t try to put them in at all are the easiest to edit. Those who have a go and try to put definite, indefinite or none apparently randomly are the most difficult. Try it at home and see, on a piece of sample text.
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Maxine – Finnish has the same problem. I know your pain.
One of the world’s experts on the word “the” works here in Helsinki – he wrote a book about how definiteness, particularly in English and Finnish. Only later did he realize he should have called it “The The Book”.
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Ah, The The. How I love it! (The sequel is called A A.)
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Clare, I haven’t found a system behind the use of definite articles, but maybe there isn’t any.
Graham, Liz Wager has done a lot of great writing about medical writing and publishing.
Maxine, I’ve obviously never done subediting, but I know what you mean. I guess that every nationality has different problems with writing English. We Germans probably try to write sentences that are to long and complicated, and we think you can’t use the same expression more than once.
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I find “German English” easier to follow in this regard than “US English” where there are so many adjectives and other qualifiers that you lose track of what’s a qualifier and what’s a noun.
Simpler the better, in my view – length of sentences and their structure. I am not a physical scientist but when I was a subeditor, I found the “hard” physics articles easier to sub than the biology, because they were so focused on “the point”, rather than going in for reams of detail. However, I know the biologists love their details and I know they need them!
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