User:Jeeves/Style

For some perverse reason, I actually enjoy copyediting. Hence, I will do my best to polish the writing in these wonderful articles, to help them be the best that they can be. There are heavy demands on my time from all directions, but I do what I can. In particular, I crusade against sneaky POV terms like "often", "many" and "most", and you should too! See below for more of my opinions on that.

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RULE 13: OMIT NEEDLESS WORDS! (from Strunk & White)

• OMIT NEEDLESS WORDS!
• OMIT NEEDLESS WORDS!
• OMIT NEEDLESS WORDS!

I can't repeat this enough! Most of my time editing the Wiki seems to be spent striking out superfluous verbiage, reorganizing cumbersome sentences, and trying to make the prose less monotonous. Some of this malpractice comes from half-baked mimicry of "encyclopedic" style, but a lot of it arises from having countless authors working on a single article in stages. Before you leave a paragraph you're editing, step back and read the whole thing through and admire its beauty. Is it well-organized? Does it ring with truth and glisten with clarity? If not, go back and work on it some more.

Being succinct

The highest goal in expository writing, I think, is for the prose to be succinct. Use fewer words to say more. Don't abuse complex derivational suffixes like "-ation", "-ismic", etc, because they make for stuffy text that is difficult to understand. Some words even lose meaning when they are overly derived — I can't think of any good reason why one should use "ritualistic" instead of "ritual". The suffixes cloud the meaning, implying that there are certain people who perform rituals (ritualists), and their mark on something is then ritualistic. This is probably not what the original author meant.

Another thing to watch out for in articles is the subconscious modelling of prose on the vocabularies and expressions of business, industry, computer technology, etc. That may sound strange, but here are some illustrations of this idea based on articles I have seen and fixed:

1. After working with Aztechnology for three years, John Doe migrated to Technocorp.
2. While the WhizzBang game console system had impressive graphics for its time, consumers were alienated by the cumbersome control pad.

In (1), the word "migrate" is badly misplaced. One person, or even one bird, does not "migrate". Migration refers to the instinct of birds to fly a long distance and avoid the harsh winter, and then come back again when it's over. The key aspect here is seasonal. "Migration" has been used to describe the movement of people, but even in that context it more appropriately used to describe seasonal movement, such as workers who move from farm to farm following the harvest. Here, "left for Technocorp", "left to go work for Technocorp", or "took a job at Technocorp" would be better alternatives.

In (2), "consumer" is unnecessarily vague. The word has been borrowed from marketese to mean "people who buy things". But we're not talking about people who buy things, but more specifically, people who play console games. I changed it to "gamers".

This may seem pedantic, but I assure you, precision in language radiates intelligence. We want Wikipedia to radiate intelligence.

Avoiding Awkwardness

Don't use (in your writing) too many (i.e., lots of) parentheticals (because it is jarring and smacks of hurried informality (and nested parentheses should be avoided except in the most demanding cases (because this is not computer code))). Many of the parentheses I wipe out really didn't need to be there! Commas are often better. If the effect you are looking for is some kind of "offset" text, try an mdash instead. Sentence-final parentheticals can almost always be changed to appositives:

1. Transmogrifiers have never been very popular among the youth (who see them as a way of cheating).
2. Transmogrifiers have neven been very popular among the youth, who see them as a way of cheating.

Sentence (2) is better style. Even though the who... phrase is sort of an afterthought, the parethetical is slightly disruptive. It's not bad, or wrong, just mediocre. Why settle for mediocrity?

The same sort of thing happens with excessive use of the dash. In most cases, you have a choice between using a dash, or using a semicolon. Both of them (ideally) introduce a new complete sentence that is linked to the previous one. The dash disrupts the narrative flow, while the semicolon preserves it. Too many dashes give one the impression of being jerked around by a chain, while too many semicolons give one the impression of being dragged through mud.

1. If the second sentence is not so closely linked to the previous one, consider a period instead; this allows you to capitalize the next letter, aiding legibility.
2. If the second sentence is not so closely linked to the previous one, consider a period instead. This allows you to capitalize the next letter, aiding legibility.

Gigantic sentences with six or seven phrases separated by commas are very hard to read. If you see a sentence that long, whether or not you wrote it, consider breaking it up into smaller sentences in which the phrases are more closely related. I am contriving an example here, but it is based on what I have seen in actual Wiki articles:

1. John Doe, after receiving his doctoral degree from the University of Fiji, which is famous for its comprehensive toad program, began studying toads full-time and travelled around the world to toad-infested swamps, examining their habitats and evaluating population growth, which has been threatened recently due to industrial runoff.
2. John Doe received his doctoral degree from the University of Fiji, which is famous for its comprehensive toad program. He began studying toads full-time, travelling around the world to toad-infested swamps. As toad habitats have been threatened recently by industrial runoff, he examined existing habitats and evaluated population growth.

Sentence (1) is cumbersome, and changing it to read more easily as in (2) requires no knowledge of the subject. It's just a matter of style, not substance. Rewriting is boring, agreed, but the rewards are potentially great.

Another problem that can creep in from multiple-authorship is the repetition of some word, usually adverbs. Usually, someone adds some text to an article without really altering the text around it, and then other people don't usually rewrite it. There are usually other words that can be substituted for an overused word without substantially changing the meaning, and it's usually not too much trouble to think of a few and put them in. I usually do so when I find an article like that.

If you read your prose aloud after you've finished your first draft, you can usually catch this problem before hitting "save page".

POV issues

How many people do you really speak for, after all?

As I see it, there are two halves of the POV pie. One concerns lopsided presentation, unsubstantiated views, half-truths, and deliberate slant in order to gild or discredit some idea. That's not what I'm going to discuss here, because it has more to do with psychology and the general insanity of the populace. I don't know who really killed who, why the voters were confused by the ballot, or whether acupuncture works. That's not my department, and to a large extent I don't really care. Personally, I take everything I read with a grain of salt, and I'm skeptical of damned near everything, so I feel safe from your enemy's misinformation and subversive agenda. Only the raw facts are really important. Would that everyone thought that way; there'd be no more edit wars.

What I do care about is so-called "weasel words". There is a separate writeup abouth this at wikipedia:avoid weasel words (thanks User:MyRedDice for pointing that out). Choose your "often"s and "usually"s very carefully, because they casually imply worldwide support for what they are attached to. If you can avoid using such adverbs, then don't use them. They don't add much real meaning, and make the writing sound pompous in addition to giving false or at least unsubstantiated authority.

1. Some people spread peanut butter on bread, often with jelly, to make a sandwich.
2. In the 1350s, a large number of people established Swiss bank accounts, often to conceal their ill-gotten gains.

(2) should raise a red flag. Who are you to say that most of these medieval entrepreneurs were embezzlers and drug-dealers? Any way you look at it, it's slanted, can't be backed up by evidence, and doesn't do much for you in general, other than mislead the credulous masses (i.e., everyone but you).

(1) is no problem. We even have a term for that in everyday use (peanut butter and jelly sandwich, aka "PBJ"). It's quite safe to say that jam is eaten with the peanut butter a good deal of the time. Many people eat sandwiches with peanut butter, and will not be uncomfortable with your use of "often".

More subtle is the issue of removing POV in articles that have for some reason come under fire for being biased. A great real-life example is in the writeup on meditation. Apparently, some people see this as a just a relaxation technique, but others see it as having mysterious powers, and still others see it as inextricably tied to religion. The first group felt that the other two were making outlandish claims, and the other two groups felt they were being marginalized. The article had a "disputed" tag, and the introductory text was terrible. It was a hodge-podge of qualifiers and evasions, and gave me the impression that the author was trying to walk on eggshells. This is the problem with "insertionist" editing: instead of distilling the basic facts and issues, ripping away the colored frills to get to the bricks underneath, the authors had added in more colored frills, nods and smiles to every possible viewpoint in every sentence.

In cases like this, it's better to rewrite in full, hell-bent on the facts. It is a fact that meditation involves bodily relaxation. It is a fact that meditation has been used for many centuries in, for example, Hindu society. It is a fact that some people think meditation leads to higher planes of consciousness. Rather than treading on linguistic eggshells, let's lay out the facts in the introductory text, wipe out everything else, and then write well-organized subsections describing the various points of view and their origins. That is the purpose of an encyclopedia.