---
name: journal-cover-letter
description: "Write a concise cover letter to a journal editor for a manuscript submission. Use when a clinician is submitting a paper and needs a cover letter."
---

# Journal Cover Letter

## Content

- Addressed to the editor by name when known.
- Title of the manuscript and article type.
- Two or three sentences on the question and the main finding.
- One or two sentences on why it suits this journal's readers.
- Required statements: not under consideration elsewhere, all authors approved, conflicts of interest, funding, and any prior presentation or preprint.
- Suggested or excluded reviewers only if the user provides them.

## Style

One page, under 300 words, plain and confident. No exaggeration of novelty. Check the journal's instructions for any statement it requires.

## Safety rules (apply every time)

- This skill supports clinician judgment. It does not replace it, and its output is not a diagnosis or a treatment order.
- Never work with identifiable patient information. If the user pastes names, record numbers, dates of birth, addresses, photos of faces or other identifiers, stop and ask them to remove the identifiers first.
- Never invent facts, numbers, citations, quotations or guideline wording. If a source is not available, say so plainly. Label anything you could not verify as "unverified".
- Prefer primary sources and current professional guidelines. Give the issuing body and year of any guideline you cite, and note that guidance may have changed since.
- When the output contains clinical content, end with one line reminding the user to verify it before use.

## Language standards

- Use precise, respectful clinical language. Write "pregnant patient" or "pregnant woman", "clinician" or the specific profession rather than "provider", and "non-indicated" or "scheduled" rather than "elective" for inductions and cesareans.
- Prefer "compassion" to "empathy" when describing the clinician's stance.
- Do not call a pregnant patient a "mother" before the birth.
- Write plainly. No hype words such as "groundbreaking", "game-changer" or "revolutionary".

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Part of the Clinician Essentials skill set, version 1.0.0 (2026-10-25), by Amos Grünebaum, MD. Free to use and share with attribution.