Contributors of manuscripts to medical journals generally take more pains with their data than with the use of language. Perhaps the scientist has a natural inclination to disregard what appear to be arbitrary and traditional rules of whimsical authorities. While independence of expression is to be respected, clarity is essential to understanding—and this is not apt to be achieved by jargon and carelessness. fortunately, we have available a pleasing guide in Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Jacques Barzun in the American Scholar (26:317, Summer, 1957) insists that we need a Fowler, especially in the United States; because here the English language suffers an inordinate amount of distortion, blurring and confusion. He goes on to say. "The false liberalism of laisser faire gives prompt authority to error and caprice. It is not, of course, any single violation of meaning or idiom, however frequent, that harms the common property of language. If frequent, the error becomes general—becomes the language—in the traditional way of change. What does harm, now and hereafter, is the loss of the feeling for words, the disappearance of any instinct and any preferences about their formation and combination. For this soon means the abolition of convenient devices for being brief, exact and possibly agreeable."
Woman Editors-in-Chief of English-Language Medical Journals Published by the Japanese Professional Medical Associations
