“I found this in my grandfather’s cellar,” he said, sliding the paper across the mahogany desk. “He was a partisan doctor in WWII. He wrote a diary of treatments given to fugitives in the Apennines. But the last page… it’s just a list of citations. And the journal titles are… wrong.”
Elena spent the next three days in the NLM’s concrete-and-steel annex, where the original bound copies of Index Medicus slept like sarcophagi. She pulled Volume 1, Series 1, 1960. She found the abbreviation list. “I found this in my grandfather’s cellar,” he
: Unlike many other styles, NLM abbreviations generally do not use periods after the abbreviated words. But the last page… it’s just a list of citations
The NLM continues to update its catalog. As new journals launch (e.g., Nature Reviews Bioengineering , which abbreviates to Nat Rev Bioeng ), the library assigns new abbreviations following the classic Index Medicus logic. She found the abbreviation list
Modern NLM abbreviations do not include internal spaces or periods. In the classic Index Medicus print era, periods were common (e.g., J. Exp. Med. ). Today, the NLM style for databases and citations omits periods unless they are part of an initialism (e.g., "JAMA" is fine, but "N. Engl. J. Med." is now generally written as N Engl J Med ). Always check the specific NLM entry for the current standard.