Typical Mistakes That Surgeons Make When Speaking and Writing in English

In this section, we will try to share with you what we have found to be some of the great hurdles in surgical English. There are many things that can go wrong when one is asked to give a lecture in English or whenever one is supposed to communicate in surgical English. This is by no means an exhaustive account, it is just a way of passing on what we have learned from our own experience in the fascinating world of surgical English.

When preparing and actually delivering a presentation in English at an international surgical conference, a series of basic issues should be taken into account. We have grouped these into the following four categories:

• 1. Misnomers and false friends

• 2. Common grammatical mistakes

• 3. Common spelling mistakes

• 4. Common pronunciation mistakes