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Writers Guidelines

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Writers guidelines for Medications.com

Guidelines for writing about Drugs, Conditions and Procedures

WHERE TO GET INFORMATION

You can generally get good Drug information from the product page of the manufacturer or the FDA. The PDF insert that comes with the drug is also generally available. As part of your research, you need to google for this information.

For example, information about the drug Mirena can be found at the Bayer Pharmaceuticals site

For Conditions and Procedures you can visit any of the many government health sites to get your facts together.

DO NOT COPY AND PASTE

Do NOT verbatim copy/paste information from other commercial sites (competitors of medications.com or wikipedia). We use a service to check what you write to see if copied. If you copy and pasted ANY amount of information from other sites, we will know and you will forfeit any funds already earned from writing with us.

Do NOT link to other sites that could be competitors of medications.com. (rxlist.com, drugs.com, webmd.com, etc). It is ok to link to government sites, and the manufacturer of the drug itself. You can make up to 5 links in the links section of the site. If you really need to, please contact the administrator first.

TEMPLATING

ALWAYS use the template provided below. Documents not adhering to the template will be rejected.

NO UNNECESSARY CONTENT

The information you provide should be as comprehensive as you can make it, without containing superfluous content.

CHECK SOURCES FOR ACCURACY

Always check at least 3 sources to make sure the facts in your text is correct. Our disclaimer covers any errors, but we do want to strive to be correct, regardless.

USE THE ACTIVE VOICE

The idea of someone reading your information is that they will go to their doctor more informed. Make sure that you use the active voice, without at the same time making people want to self-medicate. If you are unsure about a particular fact, follow up the section with “you should see your doctor for more information”. We will be automatically appending a short version of the disclaimer at the end of your document.

ACCURACY OF CONTENT AND PAYMENT

All content submitted will be checked for writing style, spelling errors, accuracy, duplication of content, and quality of information before payment is credited.

LENGTH OF CONTENT

We want to have between 400 - 1000 words for each piece. Note however, the word count you see in your word processor will be different from the word count our system sees. This is because our system filters out indefinite articles, and other “padding words”. For your piece to meet the word count requirement it must be 400 lengths by our measure (scroll to the bottom for tips on how to meet the word requirement). Pieces shorter or longer than this, or having unnecessary words to pad the content will be rejected. Documents not formatted correctly to spec or formatted as per our template, in our system (using Markdown) will be rejected. We do provide a word counter in the CRM.

DO NOT FORMAT IN MICROSOFT WORD!

Do NOT format your content in Microsoft Word and then paste it into our CRM system. We have been having issues with smart quotes and other formatting in Word. Instead TURN OFF ALL FORMATTING in word, and only format using line and letter spacing. All formatting has to be done within our system. We would absolutely prefer if you used any other pure text editor besides Word. Trust us, it will save you a boatload of time reformatting later.

We use Markdown to format the pages. Read this Markdown Tutorial

TEMPLATES

Drugs

  • Summary (A short paragraph summarizing what the drug is and what its used for. Someone should get an idea of whats up just by reading this. Summary should be no more than 25 words)

  • Introduction - A longer summary of what the drug is. Can contain history, who manufactured it, and why it was introduced

  • Multimedia (if any) – youtube videos, or any photos from the manufacturer

  • What is XXX used for? – explains the uses of the drug

  • Side effects of XXX – lists the potential side effects from the manufacturer. Also you can check medications.com to see other common side effects reported by users.

  • Who should use it – A list of the people who can use this drug or who this drug would benefit.

  • Who should not use it – example, children, pregnant and nursing women, etc.

  • Links (up to 5 external) – manufacturer, govt site, studies, news articles etc.

Conditions

  • Summary

  • Introduction

  • Multimedia (if any)

  • XXX Signs and Symptoms

  • Causes of XXX

  • How XXX is diagnosed

  • Who is most affected by XXX

  • Treatments of XXX

  • Links (up to 5 external)

Procedures

  • Summary

  • Introduction

  • Multimedia (if any)

  • Why XXX?

  • Technique - How XXX is done

  • Preparing for XXX

  • Links (up to 5 external)

TIPS FOR MEETING THE WORD REQUIREMENT

  • Elaborate on positive and negative side-effects of the drug/procedure

  • Explain the demographics for a particular drug/procedure

  • Elaborate on the pros/cons to using an alternative to a drug/procedure

  • Google a drug or procedure to find common questions people ask about it, add the question and a thorough answer to it.

  • These pages should be a wealth of information that is difficult to find anywhere else.