E I) I ‘1’ 0 K I A 1,

me Elongated Yellow Fmit

harles Morton wrote about an experience he had in the mid-1930s in the city room of the

Boston Evening Transcript. It was there, he wrote, that he first became aware of the elongated yellow fruit school of writing. The phrase turned up in a story about some fugitive monkeys and the efforts of police to recapture them using bananas as bait (Bartlett & Kaplan, 1992).

Too much of the nursing literature has fallen prey to the elongated yellow fruit school of writing. This school holds that bigger is better: the bigger word, the bigger paragraph, and the bigger article.

Our goal at JOGNN is to communicate effectively with readers who are busy and who are bombarded by messages competing for their attention. We’ve devel- oped some guidelines for nurses, whether they are writing memos, manuscripts, monographs, or their memoirs.

If it’s a banana, call it a banana. The word pain communicates a more precise meaning than does “al- teration in comfort.” We have said it all when we say that hospitals handle emergencies; nothing is gained by saying “hospital settings handle emergency situa- tions.” Simple words are elegant: use instead of uti- lize, start instead of initiate, stop instead of terminate.

Redundancy is all right, and it’s much better than ambiguity. We received a paper on breastfeeding once that referred to the baby, the neonate, the infant, and the child. We could only wonder how many children the woman was feeding.

Target your audience and speak directly to it. Sup- pose you arrived at the hospital early. On your way to your unit, you stopped to get coffee in the cafeteria and discovered you had left your wallet at home. Your friend Karen was there and loaned you $5.00. If you did not see her for a while, you might mail the money and write a note. Would you write the following? “Dear Karen: Enclosed please find my personal check made payable to you in the amount of $5.00. I am very appreciative of your gracious generosity, which facili- tated the purchase of my doughnut and coffee.” N o one talks this way, but such stilted language is part of the nursing literature. When writing, picture a person from your audience-someone you know-and talk to her.

Use the active voice. In the past, journals encour- aged writers to use the passive voice. Rather than say- ing “the nurse carried out the plan” (active voice), the style was to say that the plan had been implemented (passive voice). Recently, one nurse editor noted that “about half of the case studies which are submitted for publication never mention the nurse nor what she did for the patient” (Johnson, 1992). Today, the best writ- ing assigns responsibility and has a lively tone. Readers need to know who did what to whom. Give credit.

Avoid weasel words. It seems that nurses do not often do anything, rather we attempt to do it or hope to do it. We avoid concluding something definitively by saying “in some cases,” “it appears that,” or “to a cer- tain degree.” These terms hedge meaning and dilute thought; they weaken your argument.

Trust your colleagues. Of the manuscripts re- ceived in the JOGNN editorial office, 10-20% are pep- pered with shoulds and musts. Nurses should do this, they must do that, and it is imperative that. . . . Trust your colleagues to evaluate the information presented and proceed appropriately. Don’t preach to them.

Economize words. William Strunk (1918) advised all writers that “A sentence should contain no unnec- essary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”

Use measurable, quantifiable language. Avoid ab- stract words that say nothing, such as, very, relatively, frequently, quite, and rather. Be specific.

The nursing literature transmits knowledge from hospital to hospital, coast to coast, and generation to generation. The literature substitutes for experiences we have not had with patients and for discussions we had not held with colleagues. At its best, the written word is direct, simple, and vigorous.

Karen B. Haller, RNPhD, FMN Editor

and

Frances Shuping Associate Executive Director,

References

A WHONN

Bartlett, J., & Kaplan, J. (Eds.). (1992). Familiar quotations (16th ed. rev.). Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company.

Johnson, S. H. (1992, Spring). How to write a case study. Nurse Author G Editor, p . 1 .

Strunk, W. (1918). The elements of style. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing.

480 J O G N N Volume 22 Number G