Setting standards for medical writing in orthopaedics.

Once the privilege of few clinical scholars in the field of orthopaedics, medical writing has become a must for career advancement. The number of papers submitted and published yearly has increased steadily, and with the development of the Internet, manuscript and journals have become easily accessible. Medical writing has risen to become a discipline in itself, with rules and standards. However, heterogeneity in the quality of papers submitted still prevails, with large variations in both form and content. With countries such as China and India submitting an exponential number of manuscripts, it is important and helpful that standards of medical writing be emphasised to help writers who do not always have the required support to produce an outstanding manuscript. In this paper, we summarise what may become standards for medical writing in the field of orthopaedics.