27796
In English, it is considered a best practice to emphasize differences between
the names of medications that are fairly similar, so as to minimize the risk
that a medical practitioner will misread the name of one medication as another
medication, thereby potentially causing a harmful or fatal medication error.

The preferred way of doing this is via so-called "[tall man
lettering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_Man_lettering)", in which one
capitalizes the section of the name that is distinguishing. For example, the
drugs "hydralazine" and "hydroxyzine" are typically typeset as "hydrALAzine"
and "hydrOXYzine" in medical contexts. (Other methods of sub-word emphasis,
like boldface or use of a different font, are not preferred, since they may
not always be available. For example, if you have a system that prints
prescriptions using a dot-matrix printer, you're boned if you rely on boldface
or multiple fonts being available.)

What is the equivalent of this in Japanese, if any? I would be interested in
knowing the answer in any context where distinguishing between similar-looking
words is critical, whether in medicine or elsewhere.

(Note: I am aware of various ways to emphasize individual glyphs in Japanese,
such as by using 傍点. I am specifically interested in knowing what is actually
used in practice in medicine or other fields where distinguishing between
similar-looking words has implications for safety/etc.)
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2015-09-03T00:27:40.330
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question
words typesetting
How are similar-looking words (e.g. names of medications) distinguished?
Distinguishing drugs with similar names is a critical problem in Japan, too.
Some notorious examples include リピラート (hypolipidemic agent) vs. ソピラート
(antiarrhythmic agent), and タキソール vs. タキソテール (both used for chemotherapy).
Medical workers are [working hard to prevent
取り違え](http://www.nichiyaku.or.jp/anzen/).

However, at least in medicine, there is no similar convention which is
directly related to the language features of Japanese. Some drugs have
abandoned their brand names altogether (like
[this](https://medical.nikkeibp.co.jp/leaf/all/series/drug/update/201206/525627.html)
and [this](http://www.med.or.jp/nichinews/n210820o.html)) to avoid confusion
(BTW in Japan, most drugs are referred to using their brand names, rather than
the generic names). Some drug packages [use larger
font](http://pfizerpro.jp/lp/establish-g/products/dc05/docetaxel_injection/).
Aside from these, there's not much worth discussing in this site.

Partially using hiragana wouldn't work, because they don't stand out. To
highlight a part of a word, one method that works everywhere is to use
brackets (i.e., `タキ「ソ」ールとタキ「ソテ」ール`), but that's not done routinely in medical
practice (AFAIK).
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2015-09-03T03:29:00.793
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answer