Editorial standards
The rules our own pages are held to, including the words we are not allowed to use.
- Version of 2026-10-04
How we write
We write to the reader, not about them. You will see "your case", not "the patient".
- Short sentences, one idea each. A headline stays under twelve words.
- Present tense and plain verbs. If a sentence needs a second reading, it gets rewritten.
- No urgency and no fear. We never write that places are filling up, that time is running out, or that a reader must act now.
- When something is unknown, the page says it is unknown. We do not fill a gap with a guess to make a page look complete.
- One accent colour, one font family, one rounding system. Presentation never carries a claim that the text does not make.
Words we do not publish
These terms are blocked in every language edition, in page copy, in image captions and in button labels.
| Blocked | Why | Write instead |
|---|---|---|
| cure / cured / healing promise | States an outcome we cannot verify for any individual patient. | treatment, care, what the hospital reports |
| guarantee / guaranteed | The hospital decides whether it accepts a case, and we cannot promise that. | we arrange and translate; the hospital decides |
| miracle | Marketing language with no measurable meaning. | describe the treatment and cite the source |
| save your life | A promise about an individual outcome. | describe what the treatment involves |
| 100% safe | No medical procedure carries no risk. | state the reported risks and their source |
| best (without a source) | A ranking claim with nothing behind it. | reported as one of the larger centres for this condition |
| top hospital (without a source) / No.1 / world-class | Superlatives that imply a ranking we do not have a source for. | name the list and the year the hospital appears on it |
| Chinese equivalents: 治愈 / 根治 / 包治 / 最好 / 第一 (without a source) | The same outcome promises and unsourced superlatives, in the Chinese edition. | 已开展 / 公开可查 / 据公告披露 |
Words that need a source
Some terms are allowed, but only with the evidence attached. Without a source, a year and a basis, the sentence is dropped rather than softened.
| Term | Condition for use |
|---|---|
| leading, advanced, proven | Comparative and efficacy claims; a source and a date are required, or the sentence is dropped. |
| success rate | Must be presented as what the cited study measured, in the population it measured. |
| survival rate | Official figures only, with the period, the population and the source. Never presented as a prognosis. |
| fast appointment | Only with a stated time frame and the source it comes from. |
Numbers
A number is published with three things: the period it describes, the basis it was measured on, and the source. Where the source gives a range, we publish the range and never a single derived average.
AI use and disclosure
Language models help us draft and summarise. They do not decide what gets published, and they do not review anything for medical accuracy.
- News summaries are generated from the original article and labelled as AI-assisted on the page.
- Every generated draft is checked against its source by a person before publication.
- A generated summary never replaces the original: the page links back to the source publisher, and we do not reproduce the full article.
- No page claims medical review unless a named clinician has reviewed it. The methodology page lists who is accountable.
Independence
Patients pay us for the services we provide. Hospitals do not.
- We do not take commission from hospitals, and we do not accept payment for a place in a list.
- Paying us never changes which hospitals appear on a page, or the order they appear in.
- Where a page links to an external service, the page says so and links out rather than hosting the material.
- We do not publish doctors' pages or rank individual clinicians, and we do not publish treatment plans.