Lets Create A Ptsd Diagnosis

[anthony]

Is there any legal or definition difference between:

Direct exposure to (via experiencing or witnessing) actual or immediate threat of death, catastrophic injury, or sexual violence.

Direct exposure via experiencing or witnessing actual or immediate threat of death, catastrophic injury, or sexual violence.

I'm no grammar guru, and I know there are some here. @Simply Simon would know this answer best, as this is her field of expertise.

 

[Sideways]

Happy to defer to others, because at this point I'm just using the punctuation to make it more reader-friendly. Back down to personal preference I think.

 

[joeylittle]

Direct exposure to (via experiencing or witnessing) actual or immediate threat of death, catastrophic injury, or sexual violence.

Yeah, it needs the 'to'. I don't know why I keep skipping it. And as far as the parenthesis go, I'm not sure what style manual my brain is dredging up at this point, but it's probably wrong. I just think it helps the read/flow. But Simon will come by and put us right. :bag:

 

[lostforgottensoul]

Direct exposure to (via experiencing or witnessing) actual or immediate threat of death, catastrophic injury, or sexual violence.

Via means means of; sent a message via text.

Direct exposure via experiencing or witnessing actual or immediate threat of death, catastrophic injury, or sexual violence.

This sounds more accurate to me.

Im no grammer junkie but just via and to in there doesnt sound right, to me anyway.

Either or but not both i guess is what im saying.

 

[Kintsugi]

The illustrious joeylittle is correct about "to."

Lostforgottensoul is party right about "via," which means "by way of."

I don't do medical writing, but in the writing I do use, I try to eliminate adopted Latin phrases (like ergo, via, etc. [oh! Double entender! Shit, now I'm using French... :rolleyes:]).

Personally I would restructure the sentence one of two ways.

Directly experiencing or witnessing actual or immediate threat of death, catastrophic injury, or sexual violence.

Or my lesser preference

Direct exposure to actual or immediate threat of death, catastrophic injury, or sexual violence through experiencing or witnessing the event(s).

 

[lostforgottensoul]

Directly experiencing or witnessing actual or immediate threat of death, catastrophic injury, or sexual violence.

This one, to me, sounds way better! And also makes way more sense to me too!

Thanks Simply!

 

[Sideways]

@Simply Simon - couldn't that be interpreted as "actual death etc...or immediate threat of death..."?

My understanding was that the 'threat' applied to both the actual and the immediate, not just the immediate.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

@Ragdoll Circus to me its this, or this, this, this, this...like if any one occurs then it applies.

Or was that not what you were asking?

I know you werent asking me and its past my bedtime...sorry...

 

[Sideways]

Yeah, sorry, it's the lawyer in me that obsesses over the detail, but it will be doctors interpretting it.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

@Ragdoll Circus im neither...and know neither. Just sounded better to me for some reason. I dunno why. Im sure you would know way more than me anyway.

 

[Sideways]

Scratch that - I like it without the punctuation. Sorry!

 

[joeylittle]

I don't do medical writing, but in the writing I do use, I try to eliminate adopted Latin phrases

Via is pretty common in scientific and medical writing - there is an awful lot of talking about delivery systems. Delivered via, exposure via, spread via....it is the most economical way of saying 'by way of', 'by means of', 'by the method of' - the actual translation shifts in context. I do agree that latin doesn't belong in prose, but in technical writing, I think sometimes its unavoidable. Just my 2 cents. (I could punctuate it more, if you'd like, @Simply Simon :D:whistling::bag:)