Carl Heneghan

And that we now, I'm going to put to the editorial team to ban acronyms in already known on this topic and what this study adds.

Because at least in this part, you're going in and trying to get a summary of what.

And if you're left with an acronym, of which this is terrible.

I've just no idea what we're on.

I've no idea and that was my problem.

It's basically, I think what it means is that actually the quality of all of these instruments was pretty poor and that maybe there are a few that are lower risk than others.

But you have to go into the paper to be able to say this.

And to be honest with you, acronyms in abstracts or acronyms in areas where you're trying to improve understandings, like what is known and what this adds, are banned.

and should be thrown in the bin, and only should be for very common acronyms.

Yes, but I think, yeah, I think fair.

But also what you do is you end up writing a paper where you end up with them so all over the place that you lose track of.

That's interesting.

So I wonder if there's a... I mean, I really like the economist style guide.

If you're a writer out there, you have to go to areas where you go, look, it helps you focus your writing down.

And the newspapers rip out acronyms if you go in the main media because they just don't like them.

I wonder if we need a style guide for acceptable acronyms versus ones where we go, OK, if you're going to use this, you only have a maximum of three unknowns.

Yeah, when we talk about critical appraisal or trying to read a paper, you just don't have time to go and say, I'm going to read everything.

So if you come in at the middle and go, right, I want to go right to the results section and understand what's going on.

If you come right in at the acronyms, you're lost.

And so you can end up spending quite a few minutes going around the paper.