Drug allergies recorded in the ALLERGIES AND INTOLERANCES section should be bold and all capital letters.

Document formatting should begin flush with the left margin.

According to the Joint Commission, the timeframe for completing a History and Physical report for admission is 48 hours.

A heading of ASSESSMENT is part of a SOAP note.

The PAST MEDICAL HISTORY section records the patient’s past complaints, problems, and diagnoses.

There are reference standards for the order of headings in an Operative Note.

Procedure Notes and Operative Notes are the same.

A Referral Note must include the vital signs.

History and Physical reports must be completed within twenty-four hours of hospital admission.

The established regulation on a TAT for a Consultation Note is twelve hours.

A Transfer Summary may be used instead of a Discharge Summary.

In a Diagnostic Imaging Report, the only required heading is CONCLUSIONS.

C-CDA recommends a specific template for Pathology Reports.

A Discharge Summary must include a PLAN OF TREATMENT section.

An electronic health record must be able to generate and exchange a Continuity of Care Document.

A VITAL SIGNS section may include the patient’s height and weight.

A DISCHARGE DIAGNOSIS section will include the problems and diagnoses that occurred during the hospitalization.

Subheadings should be in all capital letters.

A serif font is preferred for medical documentation for readability reasons.

A PREOPERATIVE DIAGNOSIS section includes the surgeon’s opinion on a diagnosis that will be confirmed by a procedure.

History and physical exams should be performed within twenty-four hours of inpatient admission.

All text should be typed flush to the left margin.

The patient’s marital status is included in a GENERAL STATUS section.

Use a double space after a period between sentences.

The CHIEF COMPLAINT section includes the clinician’s conclusion.

You should refer derogatory remarks to risk management.

Verbatim transcription means it is error-free.

Flagging a document that needs to be reviewed by risk management is acceptable.

You may edit a medical record to correct translation errors made by speech recognition.

You should not edit syntax to maintain the dictator’s style.

Derogatory remarks about a patient’s family member should be left as dictated and flagged to Risk Management for review.

You should always correct dictated punctuation errors that do not affect meaning or readability.

You must edit a run-on sentence.

When a portion of dictation is missing, you should leave a blank and flag.

You should edit pronouns in the record to align with the patient’s gender.

A comma should be used to separate groups of three numerals in five digits or more but omitted if the number includes a decimal

Abbreviated units of measure should include a period.

When asking a question within a direct quote, the question mark should be inside the end quotation marks.

A comma should be used to separate two or more adjectives modifying the same noun.

Abbreviations in treatment and drug dosing instructions should include a period.

Do not use a comma to separate a person’s name from a credential.

Do not use a comma to separate the state and zip code.

Commas are not used to separate values of a single panel or test.

Use a colon followed by one space to separate the heading from a content set on the same line.

A comma should not be used to separate the day of the month from the year.

A colon should not be used before a list or series of clauses.

A hyphen should be used for all compound modifiers when they precede or modify a noun or pronoun.

A semicolon should be used to separate two independent clauses.

A colon should not be used in expressions of military time.

Use a hyphen when fractions are expressed as words.

Hyphens should be used to create compound modifiers formed with one-word modifiers and prefixes.

Use a hyphen with all disease-entity modifiers that precede a noun.

You can use a virgule where two terms are of equal weight in the expression.

A virgule may be used when expressing duality, taking the place of “or” or “and.”

A hyphen should not be used with a prefix that precedes a proper noun.

Punctuation marks should be inside the closing quotation marks in direct quotes.

Double quotation marks should be used to represent feet and inches in dimensional expression.

A virgule should be used when expressing visual acuity with Arabic numerals.

Lower-case letters should be used to begin quotations if they represent an independent clause.

When using an exclamation point as part of a direct quote, the exclamation point should be outside the quotation marks.

The first word of every sentence should be capitalized.

Do not capitalize the first word after a colon if it is a proper noun or another word that is ordinarily capitalized.

Capitalize an independent question within a sentence.

Capitalize the first word of an independent clause after a colon.

Do not capitalize the first word after a colon when the material preceding the colon is a short introductory word, such as Note, Caution, or Wanted.

Capitalize the first word following the colon when used to set off a heading or subheading, especially in the case of the Review of Systems and Physical Exam.

Items in a list or an outline, even when items in the list represent single words, phrases, or clauses, should not be capitalized.

Capitalize general occupational titles when they precede personal names.

Capitalize the first word following the opening dash or parenthesis of a parenthetical question unless it is a proper noun or another word that is ordinarily capitalized.

Capitalize all personal, executive, professional, civic, military, and religious titles that come immediately before the person’s name or that are used as part of their name or replacing their first name.

Capitalize the word grade when referring to grade levels only when a number follows it but not when a number precedes it.

Capitalize credentials that are spelled out when they are generally referenced in a sentence unless they follow a personal name as a formal title.

Family titles (e.g., mother, father, mom, dad) should not be capitalized when preceded by an article (explicit or implied) or a possessive pronoun.

Do not capitalize general references to legal terms, such as power of attorney, living will,, unless the full formal name of the low or document is referenced.

Capitalize all words in literary and artistic titles except articles (the, an, a), short conjunctions, and short prepositions unless they occur as the first or last word of

Capitalize the abbreviated forms of company, corporation, incorporated, and limited when the business name incorporates those abbreviations in its formal name or title.

Do not capitalize proper nouns and official names of a person, place, or thing.

Capitalize the O’ prefix in names that contain it but not the letter that follows the apostrophe.

Capitalize the trademark or unique name of a product and use lowercase for the descriptive terms.

Capitalize the abbreviated forms of company, corporation, incorporated, and limited when the business name incorporates those abbreviations in its formal name or title.

Capitalize the word city only when it is part of the name of the city, or in the nickname of that city.

Do not capitalize common organizational terms, such as department, division, or committee, when they are expressed as general references.

Do not capitalize eponyms.

Capitalize the names of races, languages, nationalities, ethnicities, tribes, political parties, religions, and religious denominations.

Do not capitalize genus names used in plural and adjectival forms when used in the vernacular, or when they stand alone (without an epithet).

Add an “s” to most nouns in the singular to form the plural when preceded by a vowel.

Compound nouns are always expressed as separate words.

Nouns whose plurals are formed in unusual ways are considered regular forms.

Add an “es” to nouns ending in a “y” when preceded by a consonant.

There are words that retain the same form in the singular and plural.

For hyphenated compounds, pluralize the chief noun of the compound.

When referring to the common plural of genus, lowercase letters

Do not form plurals for abbreviations by adding “s” to the singular abbreviation form.

Pluralize a single-digit number by adding only an “s".

When you pluralize a proper noun, always retain the original spelling.

Italicize foreign abbreviations, words, and phrases.

Express possession of a singular noun that does not end in “s” by adding an apostrophe plus “s” to the noun.

When forming a plural for a Latin or Greek medical term, change “-en” to “-ina."

Spell out the English translation of Greek letters and capitalize.

Express possession of compound nouns by adding an apostrophe at the end.

When forming a plural for Latin or Greek medical terms, change “-is” to “-es.”

When forming a plural for Latin or Greek medical terms, change “-um” to “-a.”

Latin or Greek medical terms ending in “-us” are the same in singular and plural forms.

Do not form a plural for units of measure.

Do not form plurals for abbreviations by adding “s” to the singular abbreviation form.

Express possession of compound nouns by adding an apostrophe at the end.

Express possession for nouns that end in “s” or “es” by adding an apostrophe before the “s.”

Express possession of singular abbreviations by adding an “s” to the end of the abbreviation.

Select the possessive form for personal pronouns.

Avoid using contractions in clinical records for personal possessive pronouns.

An initialism is an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of each successive word in a compound term and is pronounced as a word.

A brief form is a form of the word but includes syllables from the whole word.

An acronym is an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of each successive word in a compound term and is pronounced as a word.

Use an abbreviation whenever possible, even when the term or phrase is dictated in full.

Expand a dictated abbreviation if it is related to a diagnosis used in a postoperative report.

Use periods with academic degrees or professional credentials

Abbreviate state and territory names when they are preceded by a city, state, or territory name.

Never begin a sentence with an abbreviation.

Expand contractions unless they occur in a direct quotation.

Do not use a period with abbreviations and brief forms.

Do not use a space to separate a number from a nonalphabetic symbol.

Capitalize all letters in acronyms.

AHDI recommends editing dangerous abbreviations to the preferred term or phrase.

Use a lowercase “s” when forming a plural for an abbreviation, acronym, or brief form.

Do not use a space to separate a number from an alphabetic symbol.

Do not use the pound sign to indicate the word pound(s).

Ditto marks should not be used to indicate the same word or phrase.

You may use the percent sign with arabic numerals at the beginning of a sentence.

The degree symbol is a disallowed character and should always be spelled out.

You may use ditto marks to indicate inches.

Use a lower case “x” to express area, volume, and dimension.

You may use a single apostrophe as the symbol for prime.

Use the plus sign in tables or mathematical equations.

Use a pound sign before a house number in the street address.

Greek letters should be written out using all lower case.

When an ordinal number is used as a pronoun, you should not write it as a numeral.

When expressing military time, you should use a colon.

Add “s” with an apostrophe to form the plural of multiple-digit numbers, including years.

When writing roman numerals, do not use periods.

You should place commas between words expressing a numerical value.

You should use fractions instead of decimals when nonmetric units are used.

It is not acceptable to use arabic numerals at the beginning of a sentence when associated with a unit of measure, age, a 4-digit year, or immediately following a section heading.

When two distinct numbers are adjacent, write one of them as a word to prevent the reader from misreading the values.

When automatic word wrapping brings the unit of measure to the second line, carry the numeric value to the next line with it.

Use a hyphen when expressing compound fractions.