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We don't correct grammar or punctuation on this board...nm

Posted By: Old MT on 2006-05-19
In Reply to: BTW, its MTs. It doesn't need an apostrophe - unless you are showing ownership.

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Please do not correct spelling or grammar on this board. (NM)
Goldbird
Grammar/Punctuation
I would mark it as a grammar/punctuation error, however they both hold the same weight score-wise, so it really doesn't matter if you call it g/p or spelling. If it were a case of having 2 different point values, I would go with the lesser of the 2 - I always try to give the MTs the break.
Are you from India? Your punctuation and grammar are giving you away. nm
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Well, grammar/punctuation can dramatically alter meaning, so it IS important. nm
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You also have to know correct grammar


show me an offshore MT/QA that can do correct grammar and I will eat my hat and yours!!! nm
..
They are all correct style and grammar rules. More concerning are the gross HIPPA violations sm
that you admit to. No MT should EVER go into another medical record to "check" on things.

The emails are not petty; the service obviously wants good quality and it is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS WHAT OTHERS DO. Hold yourself to the highest standard and you will never have an issue.
Grammar help needed on word help board

All word questions need to be posted on the Word board. Please use the correct board to post.
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All word questions need to be posted on the Word board. Please use the correct board to post.

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This is the correct board. I feel that
there should be no error rate (that is like docking pay for leaving blanks). It is a big no no IMO. That is what QA is for.
I found it on our style board (DOE, JOHN JR is correct). Thanks! NM
(copied from another person's post) Common mistake that I see very often and of course it is up to your employer's preference but the way it SHOULD be is #2. M.D. is not part of his name, it is a title, so it should come after. This also goes for Jr., Sr., etc. Last name, first name, middle name/initial, then any title. Logically, when you are looking for a patient's chart, for example, you are looking for Doe, then John. Unless you know he is an M.D., you wouldn't know to look under for that. I hope this helps.
Punctuation
I would punctuate:
I told him to clean the area with hydrogen peroxide; and, after that he can apply the Neosporin ointment.
No, it is your punctuation. nm
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Punctuation question
Which is correct, longhaul truck driver, long-haul truck-driver, long haul truck driver?
Quick punctuation help!

 I told him to clean the area with hydrogen peroxide, and, after that, he can apply the Neosporin ointment. 


How would the punctuation be on this sentence?  Did I do it right? 


Thanks in advance for the help..


Quick punctuation help!
Thanks so much for the help!
Quick punctuation help!
Thanks, I have been doing a grammer course.
Quick punctuation help!
Thanks so much!
Quick punctuation help! sm
Sorry, but it does not seem you received much help here. The truth is every typist has her own style. It seems that quite a few want to place a comma every time the doc pauses to take a breath or shifts a page. If that is what your own doc prefers, then go for it. Most do not, however.

Grammatically, you may use commas or not in this sentence, but none are necessary. It has been my own experience that doctors would rather have less rather than more in the case of commas. Believe it or not.
Quick punctuation help!
Thanks so much for the advice!
Is question about punctuation? (sm)
If so, I'd change it to:

MUST HAVE:  Two years' experience.
Transcriptionists that do not know punctuation
I just had a dictation in which the doctor specified (correctly) where the quotation marks were in relation to the period at the end of the sentence and stated that he was tired of having to correct reports where it was incorrectly placed. I was aghast! How could anybody transcribe and not know elementary punctuation?
punctuation problems

HI,


  I am taking my medical transcription course through Allied Schools. I am having a problem trying to punctuate the dictations properly. I would like to know if anyone can help me with this problem. What I thought was proper punctuation seems to be different with medical transcription. Are we supposed to transcribe the punctuation as the doctor dictates or correct it to what we believe is correct?


   Also, I have an assignment that I just transcribed that is impossible for me to punctuate. If anyone can help me, I would truely appreciate it.


punctuation issues

I was very careful about punctuation until I had to research things and found that the MTs at my hospital NEVER use commas. I could barely understand some of the long, strung out sentences. I always researched obscure medical terms to make sure my work was accurate, yet I make $10 less an hour than others there because the pools are set up so some MTs get the profitable work before the rest of us. The point of this is, I don't feel that my excellent work is appreciated, and I don't believe the pool situation is fair, so I just do minimum to get by.  I also work IC to supplement my income,  and my IC work is much better because I feel appreciated.


 


Docs and punctuation

Regarding the posts down the list about the docs who dictate run-on sentences or add bunches of periods, etc.  I am wondering why they are not instructed to not include punctuation at all.  Our company has us disregard what they say anyway (since it is usually way off), and it seems they are making it extra rough on themselves.


I have one who says comma practically every other word.  It really threw me off at first, but now I hardly even hear it (so used to ignoring it).  But think how much easier it would be for them to not even think about it.  What works the best is when they just use their voice inflection to signal the end of one thought/subject and the beginning of another.  Being someone without a whole lot of medical background, it gets confusing when they don't.


Why is it no one seems to communicate with the dictators about such things? 


You are not wrong, Punctuation goes
inside the quotation marks.
Need help with punctuation and caps

I have MS Word 2003. This program has always capitalized the first letter after a colon (:) and for some reason today it stopped. I cannot figure this out for the life of me. I have been in Tools, etc, and see nothing that addresses this problem. If anyone has had this problem and knows how to correct it, please enlighten me. LOL


TYIA


 


Misspelled words, punctuation
I would love to be an Editor some day, love reading the typos in the newspapers, etc.   However, I nor anyone else is perfect and we all have our days.  On the other hand it depends on what you are accustomed to.  I have typed radiology periodically and on one account told to use punctuation where needed and another account that I worked clinic in-house radiology was told by the radiologists not to use punctuation unless they told us to because it could change the meaning of the sentence.  So, I obliged and no longer use punctuation unless it is dictated to me.   Unless I hear differently I will continue to do as I am told.
Per BOS2 - there are spaces, no punctuation between T N M (nm)
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There are misspellings and punctuation errors.
NM
Punctuation "is not important"?!!
Consider these sentences:

The patient said her mother is insane.

The patient, said her mother, is insane.

Two commas that completely reverse the meaning of the sentence. We are not merely "word-slammers". We are expected to convey the meaning of the spoken word, and that is the role of punctuation. Punctuation substitutes for the pauses, etc. that are used in spoken speech to convey how the words are to be interpreted.

I'm no fan of the BOS by any means, but I can't agree with the extreme statements you make here, either.

You don't have to be an "English major" to know the fundamentals of proper punctuation, either. You should have learned that in grade school. And if they ever do scrap the BOS, you can be sure no one is going to scrap the basic rules of English grammar that you're expected to know and apply.
All that punctuation nit-pickiness was brought about by
They needed a reason to do it. (And to sell their anal little BOS). Get everyone so freaked-out about commas and semicolons that they either quit, or their production falls off and they can be 'justifiably' let go, forcing the 'poor MTSO' to have to look offshore for bodies to fill their sweatshops.
All that punctuation nit-pickiness was brought about by
They needed a reason to do it. (And to sell their anal little BOS). Get everyone so freaked-out about commas and semicolons that they either quit, or their production falls off and they can be 'justifiably' let go, forcing the 'poor MTSO' to have to look offshore for bodies to fill their sweatshops.
Verbatim radiology. Should I not punctuate when punctuation is clearly indicated?

Should I leave it up to the doctors to add their punctation for this verbatim account?  Not putting commas around the word "however" is driving me crazy!


...your E-mails have to have proper English and punctuation.
Am I alone?
AAMT has rules on punctuation that are a great help.
Review them??!!??!!?!

Okay, I didn't renew with them this year, but it still doesn't negate the fact that you could use a calming influence. If AAMT causes you stress, remove it from your memory banks rather than fretting about it. It is what it is.


Re: expanding with punctuation, more info inside
I have been working on this platform for over a year and absolutely LOVE it. It is not the same as autocorrect expansions. This platform offers a LOT more.

I will type this directly from my manual to explain how the ESP abbreviations are expanded:

Press or type a delinter (a spacebar, enter, period, colon, semicolon, comma, question mark or exclamation point) that is appropriate to the sentence text or punctuation. The exapansion appears AS SOON AS you type the delimiter.

You can highlight entire sentences, paragraphs, etc and enter them directly into the ESP list and make a short abbrev. to retrieve them.

To add an ESP, press control, control and type it directly in, or highlight text in your document and then press control control and name your short abbreviation for it.

Sometimes, depending if your sentences are really LONG you will have to copy/paste directly into ESP and then give it a short.

In addition, with ESPs you can format words to be BOLD by inserting a tag. You can also put a tag in for something underlined, italic, etc. They also allow you to insert pauses and backups in your ESP so that you can type yof and get the hyphen first -year-old female.

Pauses are really neat when you want to nest an ESP inside another one. For example: if you put the following entries in your ESP:

lt (left)
tphp (The patient had pain in the)

(The ESPs need to first be created and exist)

Now you type the abbreviation containing the pause then press spacebar. The sentence expands to the point of pause and then type the abbreviation you want to nest, press the spacebar and hit enter. The complete next appears in your document. Believe me, this is something Autocorrect cannot do and really comes in handy especially when you have really repitious dictators who always give the same order on vital signs, etc.

You can also run a microsoft word macro as part of an expansion if you want. There is a special dialog box that the ESP uses for this.

ESPs also allow suffixes to be added to root words (another feature) but this is something I haven't used much yet.


You can also create more than one list of ESPs (can have 2 open at a time).

This platform also allows you to make "normals" for really long documents. Say you have a 2 page op report that a doctor will use over and over. You can just bring the entire document in. You can edit these normals at any time. These are like templates that you can insert jump codes, all your headings, numbering formats, etc.

On this board, I've been reading a lot about how people run to buy either Instant Text or ShortHand (as these are compatible with Dictatphone) but this is not something you have to run out and purchase. The ESPs offer a lot more than autocorrect.

So far, my one list of ESPs has over 20,000 entries and my line counts daily for 8 hours average between 1500 and 1800. Not bad.

The platform is REALLY easy to work from as another poster said you can pull up previous dictation from another Transcriptionist and copy/paste directly into the document you are typing. This is a really great feature when you have those really lousy dictators who pretty much say the same physical exam, etc. You can then just follow along and edit as you go.

It really is easy to use, and personally I love the Expander and have no complaints. Good luck.




Do it correct always. It will learn. Everyone has to do it correct all the time. nm
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If you are careful with putting the correct report in the correct report shell and patient, you will
not have any problems. I only take away this option when someone is careless. There can be NO room for error on this. One mistake can be very serious. Many do it well though, so just double check and you will be fine.

Boy do I know what you mean about grammar.....sm

Some of the stuff I saw from subcontractors during testing made my jaw drop to the level of my fanny in utter disbelief!  We are talking about the use of grammar equivalent to what a sixth grader knows.  It is unbelievable  - that and things they don't even take the time to research. 


My personal favorites?  


"skin graph" 


"dorsalis peterson pulses"  


 


To Grammar Cop - K-I-A
Be careful all you posters out there. The GrammarCop is on the bench and you will all perish if you do not use proper grammar on this board. She (he, it) expects perfection. I know there is a saying that fits her, but it escapes me right now but it only contains a few letters. Should be easy for her (him, it) to figure it out. Ta, ta
and grammar (nm)
xx
grammar
It seems I heard one newscaster say "went missing" a few years ago, and it caught my interest. All of a sudden I am hearing it every day! Did this rule get changed when we weren't looking?
bad grammar
I had one who used to say "we might could" as in "we might could try her on Lortab". Hahaha
grammar
I just got a correction back from the company I work for telling me the following sentence is incorrect:  "He stated he would contact me should he wish to pursue more aggressive treatment, specifically, steroid injection or surgical treatment."  They are telling me it should be "more aggressively treatment."  Would someone please help me out here?  Thanks!! 
grammar
Has anyone used Grammar Slammer?
Grammar?

How about accuracy and grammar? Medicatios, etc. Sometimes the dictator will not even dictate if the report remains the same from last visit - What happens in this case??  


Thanks  


Bad grammar
I'm pretty lenient. If it is something the client wouldn't notice (or even know about) themselves, I normally let it go.

Things like commas separating independent clauses, which most people don't have any concept of, I let go.

But, things like this:

X-rays of the right knee 2 views demonstrate a meniscal tear complex with chondral changes.

He has degenerative arthritis left knee with increasing inability to cope.

Almost every Transcriptionist I have QA'd drops the commas from those kinds of sentences. Are they teaching this in some school? It's driving me batty!
Grammar
What about "I seen the patient last week." "There is lots of problems." etc., etc., etc. Not as bad as a 2-month-old baby with teeth in good repair, and a 3-year-old who does not smoke or drink. lol We need to be mindful to catch our own mistakes and theirs.
Grammar
It depends on the company and/or the client. If your company is 'picky' about commas, I'd suggest investing in the newest Book of Style and following those 'rules'.