Liz Wager on the definite article
13 Feb, 09 | by BMJ Group
I’ve been editing papers written by speakers of languages, such as Russian and Chinese, that don’t use definite and indefinite articles (”the” or “an”) in the same way as English and mulling over the somewhat mysterious use of articles in medical terms. Some colloquial expressions award illnesses a definite article, so you might hear “He’s got the flu” or “Jane’s had the measles” but you’d never say “She’s got the cancer”. Historical terms for illnesses seem more likely to get a definite article than new ones, so people died from the plague but now they just get AIDS. Shakespeare mentioned that Julius Caesar “had the falling sickness” (ie epilepsy) but I don’t remember anybody having the rheumatism.
Symptoms seem to need an indefinite article, so we say “My daughter’s got a rash” or “I’ve got a headache” or “He had a fever”. But when we use posh medical terms we seem to lose the article. So a patient will have neuralgia, or pyrexia. Only truly countable objects such as a polyp or discrete events such as a stroke seem to need an indefinite article in medical writing.
Chronic complaints and diagnoses (as opposed to symptoms) don’t require an article, so people suffer from diabetes, epilepsy or eczema. Articles are not required for a few transitory complaints such as writer’s cramp and housemaid’s knee, presumably because “He’s got the housemaid’s knee” is open to misinterpretation (but, once again, in medic-speak the article disappears and the patient simply has prepatellar bursitis).
I’m definitely confused!
Liz Wager is a freelance writer, trainer and publications consultant who works for a number of pharmaceutical companies, communication agencies, publishers and academic institutions. She is also the Secretary of COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics) and a member of the BMJ’s ethics committee
Thanks, Liz.
Reminds me of the debate we have here sometimes about the BMJ. Well, that’s what we editors call it - “the” BMJ - and that’s our style when citing the journal in articles and when speaking.
But the BMJ marketing team, very reasonably, say the “the” is unnecessary and old fashioned, and that simply “BMJ” is stronger.
(Competing interest - I was BMJ duty editor today, and approved Liz’s blog)
Trish Groves
February 13th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Lovely! I guessed who might have written this even before I `clicked`.
The one that gets me going is `the patient` - whoever s/he may be……. (Sometimes unavoidable, I grant.)
Hazel Thornton
February 14th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Waoooooooooooo!!!
This is fantastic point! I’m really impressed to read the point that many get stuck with while preparing manuscript by non-native English speaking countries. The mistakes/uses must be irritating for the editors from the great English journals with such uses which seem usual for others who are from another end.
Many a time, the English of scientific article from English speaking countries are too tough for the people from non-English speaking countries like me.
Thank you!
Best wishes,
mati
Matiram Pun
February 16th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Regarding sceintific (not literature) papers, I think that beside grammar perfection, more important should be the argument originality, importance, usefulness, author shows…even he is an autodidact one!
Sergio Stagnaro
February 17th, 2009 at 9:17 am
I thought of your blog when I read a paper today with a sentence that begins “FDA asked eight companies…” That sounds fine to my ear but I’d be equally happy with “The FDA asked eight companies…” Yet if published we’ll ask the authors of the paper to remove abbreviations, in which case it wouldn’t seem fine (to me, anyway) to write “Food and Drug Administration asked eight companies…” What’s the explanation for why use of an article is okay with the abbreviation but doesn’t seem right when the phrase is written out in full?
Elizabeth Loder
February 18th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
I think perhaps there’s a transatlantic difference at work here, as ‘FDA asked’ (without a definite article) sounds odd to my English ears. I’m pretty sure I’d use a definite article for abbreviations such as the BBC. But here’s an interesting one — acronyms (where the initials are pronounced as a single word) can lose their articles, so it sounds fine to talk about UNESCO, and it wouldn’t seem right to write ‘the UNESCO’. So it might depend on whether you called it the W.H.O. (i.e. naming the three letters) or, as some people do Who (as a single word). The more I think about this subject, the more complex it becomes and the more appreciation I have for people who can learn English as a second language!
Liz Wager
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Thank you Liz, this is interesting. Never mind acronyms, a simple abbreviation can have a similar effect:
Mary has the flu or Mary has influenza.
John
John Beadle
August 2nd, 2009 at 2:00 pm