We are happy to report that we are helping our friends at Daniels Chiropractic Office again, this time with an update to their tri-fold brochure.

After several years with one piece, they decided it was time for a refresh, and came to Write and Polish to work on it.

We'll share it with you when it's complete.

In the meanwhile, if you live or work in the Racine, Wisconsin area and you're experiencing physical discomfort from an injury, have chronic back/neck pain, suffer from frequent or severe headaches, or are just interested in living a healthier life, contact Daniels Chiropractic.

Write and Polish has issued a press release on behalf of The Eye Centers of Racine and Kenosha, "Eye Centers of Racine and Kenosha Announce New Doctor."

We have encountered this twice in recent weeks -- either a straight-up error, or the result of auto-correct undermining the writer's meaning: the acronym AIDS rendered as "Aids."

One instance was in looking over a fundraising piece, the other when reviewing a medical information form from a dentist's office. All of the healthcare fields, and a few of the charitable/non-profit ones, need to be on the lookout for this specific error.

Auto-correct saves us from a lot of mistakes...but opens up whole new possibilities for embarrassment. If there are acronyms that you use regularly in your line of work, make a Ctrl+F review of them part of your standard editing/revision process, in order to ensure that they are all properly capitalized.

When abbreviating a multi-word name, the capitals are retained, partly as a clue that the resulting "word" stands for something else. "AIDS" represents the the term "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome." Hence, must always be given in caps.


Bonus: 
Both "HIV," the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (that causes AIDS) and "AIDS" are abbreviations. However, AIDS is also an acronym, as the abbreviation creates a name that is read as a word. The alternative would be to refer to AIDS by its individual letters, as the disease ay-eye-dee-ess.

Whether or not an abbreviation is used as an acronym is not always obvious. The initial letters of the World Health Organization (WHO) creates a readable word, but the agency does not go by "the WHO (hoo)," as it could create confusion with the band of the same name. Ergo, even though it could be an acronym, it isn't used as such.

So, CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), IRS (Internal Revenue Service), BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and IRA (Irish Republican Army) are abbreviations. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and IRA (Individual Retirement Account) are abbreviations that are also acronyms.

For vastly more on this topic, visit Wikipedia.

Daniels Chiropractic Office recently engaged Write and Polish to undertake a complete edit/revision of its website content. 

Dr. John Daniels, one of the members of the practice's third generation of practitioners, built the website using tools provided by a company that specializes in sites for chiropractors. It looked great, but the text was held over from a previous iteration of the site, and needed both updating and to be tightened up.

Conveying a lot of information with a degree of economy is always a challenge; we think this one turned out quite nicely.

If you are in the Racine area, we can also recommend the care delivered by Daniels Chiropractic. We're not just their writers...we're their patients as well!