In this issue •  We continue Michael Schneir's fascinating series on distractions in medical and scientific writing, this time concentrating on non-pronoun-induced backtracking with adverbs, verbs, and nouns. This sounds a little fearsome, but the concepts are straightforward and, as ever, Michael gives us elegant solutions. •  Sirisha Bulusu provides sound advice on the preparation of congress abstracts. This will be followed up by a second part in our next issue.