Human Orthopaedic Articles Convey Information Differently than Veterinary Orthopaedic Articles: A Prospective, Cross-Sectional Analysis

Abstract The objective of this analysis was to compare the length and number of active voice sentences in human orthopaedic articles to veterinary orthopaedic articles. The goal is to provide authors and reviewers with objective, evidence-based guidelines to critically evaluate those two aspects of style of veterinary manuscripts during the writing phase of research and the review process. We used word counts and the percent of active voice sentences of the introduction sections and discussion sections in 15 randomly chosen veterinary orthopaedic clinical trial articles and 15 randomly chosen human orthopaedic clinical trial articles. Veterinary introduction sections were on average 193 words longer than human introduction sections (p = 0.001). Veterinary discussion sections were on average 370 words longer than human discussion sections. Veterinary introduction sections had on average 14.4 percent fewer active voice sentences than human introduction sections (p = 0.003). Veterinary discussion sections had on average 8.3 percent fewer active voice sentences than human discussion sections. Our conclusion is that human articles are written in a different style from veterinary clinical trial articles, which could be written with fewer words and more active sentences.