Editor's Note

摘要

In an era of increasing subspecialisation in most branches of medicine, we tend to fall into habits of using shorthand instantly recognised by our own colleagues but not so easily by others. The tendency to use them in publications is partly based on that, and partly on a desire to reduce duplication and minimise space used. The letters by Wiseman1 and Boughton2 highlight the difficulty of keeping track of unfamiliar acronyms and abbreviations (although I would hope that most of our readers would instantly know what RACP stood for) despite them being expanded on first use. Accordingly, we have taken the step of asking authors of long-form papers to provide a list of abbreviations used to assist readers not familiar with the particular field and to encourage wider readership. This will apply to new submissions.