AMWA Journal / V36 N1 / 2021 / amwa.org 47 members of a lay audience may not understand that an evolutionary strategy is not something that the organisms are planning to do. So, depending on your intended audi- ence, you may have to avoid using a shorthand or at least explain what the shorthand means. Metonyms can also be used in medical writing, albeit cautiously. For example, the word practice is often used as a metonym to refer to a type of business in which a medi- cal practitioner or group of practitioners provide care to patients. So, you might use the term “the practice” when you want to refer to such a business as a business or when you don’t want to specify a particular part of the business. For example, you could encourage patients to “contact the practice” without specifying which person or even which office to contact. Your goal should be clarity. If the patients can contact any member of the staff, you can urge them to contact the practice. In general, you may wish to avoid unnecessary use of figurative language in a technical report, such as a clinical study protocol—especially if it is going to be translated. However, there is considerably more room for literary inventiveness in an opinion piece. In such pieces, authors may wish to express their own emotions and to evoke emotions in the audience, especially to underscore the importance and urgency of their message. In that situation, the writer may use figurative language for rhetorical effect. Learn More Metaphors, similes, and metonyms are not the only forms of figurative language. The Silva Rhetoricae Web site (http://rhetoric.byu.edu/), maintained by Dr Gideon Burton of Brigham Young University, provides an extensive list of figures of speech, all of which are named, defined, and categorized. Many of these rhetorical figures have Greek or Latin names because they have been recognized since classical times to be valuable in persuasion. Author declaration and disclosures: The author notes no commer- cial associations that may pose a conflict of interest in relation to this article. Author contact: www.nottrivialbook.com; lthomas521@verizon.net International Society for Medical Publication Professionals April 12-14, 2021 Virtual https://www.ismpp.org/annual-meeting Association of Independent Information Professionals April 14-16, 2021 Virtual https://virtual21.aiip.org/ American Copy Editors Society April 22-23, 2021 Virtual https://aceseditors.org/conference American Society for Indexing April 30 to May 1, 2021 Virtual https://www.asindexing.org/conference/2021-presentation- proposals/ Council of Science Editors May 3-5, 2021 Virtual https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/events/upcoming- events/2021-cse-annual-meeting/ European Medical Writers Association May 4-8, 2021 Virtual https://www.emwa.org/conferences/future-conferences Society for Scholarly Publishing May 24-27, 2021 Virtual https://customer.sspnet.org/ssp/AM21/Home Society for Technical Communication June 5-9, 2021 Virtual https://summit.stc.org Association of Health Care Journalists June 24-27, 2021 Austin, TX https://healthjournalism.org/calendar-details.php?id=2245 DIA June 27 to July 1, 2021 Virtual https://www.diaglobal.org/Flagship/DIA-2021 CALENDAR OF MEETINGS Please confirm with individual meeting hosts 2021 AMWA Medical Writing & Communication Conference OCTOBER 27-30, 2021 Trends and Opportunities for Medical Communicators www.amwa.org/conference http://www.amwa.org/conference http://rhetoric.byu.edu/ http://www.nottrivialbook.com mailto:lthomas521@verizon.net https://www.ismpp.org/annual-meeting https://virtual21.aiip.org/ https://aceseditors.org/conference https://www.asindexing.org/conference/2021-presentation-proposals/Council https://www.asindexing.org/conference/2021-presentation-proposals/ https://www.asindexing.org/conference/2021-presentation-proposals/Council https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/events/upcoming-events/2021-cse-annual-meeting/ https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/events/upcoming-events/2021-cse-annual-meeting/ https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/events/upcoming-events/2021-cse-annual-meeting/ https://www.emwa.org/conferences/future-conferences https://customer.sspnet.org/ssp/AM21/Home https://summit.stc.org https://healthjournalism.org/calendar-details.php?id=2245 https://www.diaglobal.org/Flagship/DIA-2021