User:Zaereth/Writing tips for the amateur writer

The following are some very basic tips on the process of writing. These are mainly aimed at helping the Wikipedian who is a beginner, or not a professional writer, to understand many of the processes involved in creating coherent prose. I hope this will be useful for every Wikipedian from newcomers to technicians, scientists, doctors, lawyers, hobbyists, and anyone else who has written a sentence or paragraph, and just can't figure out why it doesn't look right. An encyclopedia is written in a very logical style, and it is easy to understand why upon reading a well written article. However, it is a style of which most people --even talented technical, academic, or fiction writers-- may not understand the reasoning behind all of the rules.

This essay contains many of my personal insights, and is meant only to be a helpful guide to Wikipedia writers. This should not be used as a reference in any article.

I'm not going to go into any great detail. I created this essay to help Wikipedians understand the underlying reasons for the many rules involved in writing, but I'm not going to explain the rules themselves. Although the rules are helpful in the long run, this essay is meant as a quick way to help people start writing coherently, now. Pay close attention and you may even notice that many of the things I discuss will be incorporated into the very sentences that discuss them.

Writing is a very complicated process. In the speaking world, we string coherent sentences together effortlessly, conveying thought and meaning at a mind-boggling pace. However, in speaking, we use much more than our words to do this. Our body language actually tells a great deal of the story. Facial expressions give emotion, while hand movements imply both emphasis and motion. Even without these cues, such as when talking on the telephone, our tone also conveys emotion and emphasis.

In writing, these verbal and non-verbal cues are mostly absent. Writing relies on careful choice of words, noting how those words may be interpreted or misinterpreted within the context. Writing also relies on punctuation to provide most of the emphasis and emotional changes.

Crafting coherency

Writing is a form of communication using symbols that represent various words, such as things (nouns), actions (verbs) or descriptions (adjectives or adverbs). Writing is very much like speaking to someone, except that the reader has no way to ask you to clarify certain points. The reader doesn't have any of the body language or vocal tones that help them to discern the exact meaning. In writing, it is up to the writer to carefully examine the words, trying to see them from the reader's point of view: To find and correct unclear statements, to anticipate the reader's questions and answer them without being asked, and to keep a high degree of accuracy.

To do this, the writer must write coherently, paying close attention to the various meanings a word can have in a particular context. However, unlike speech, the readers can't hear your tone and rhythm. Instead, writing also relies on the connotations of words, in a particular context, solely to give emotional context for the reader. The writer must also pay attention to punctuation, trying to keep the writing, in the reader's mind, as close to the way you would actually speak it: That is, the way you would ideally speak it. Writing must be organized into a comprehensive structure to be easily understandable and, for clarity, it also helps to keep information in a logical order, and as concise as possible. All of these factors need to be considered by the writer to make the prose coherent and understandable for the reader.

Meaning: syntax and context

What is "meaning?" What does it mean to mean something? It is more than just a simple definition. Dictionaries define it as being primarily "an inner significance." Cognitive scientists can give all sorts of theories, but pinpointing exactly how the brain perceives a meaning remains elusive. However, two things are clear: 1.) The way the brain processes language is far more complex than we had ever previously realized, and 2.) meaning, not words, is at the core of these processes.

An example of this complexity is the codependence between action and language. Studies show that an action is performed better when talking about that action, but far worse if talking about an opposing action. As most people know, driving performance is markedly reduced when having a casual conversation, like chatting on the phone or even to the person in the passenger seat. However, both performance and situational awareness is vastly increased if talking about the drive, such as police officers describing a high-speed chase.

Consciousness depends on language. Actually, it depends on two languages: Our conscious language of words and the subconscious language, which existed before words. The subconscious language is instinctual (we are born with it), and it is the same language for all humans across the world. Very small children who experienced traumatic events can sometimes recall these events many years later, but recall them in a "wordless language." Helen Keller also wrote about this. However, between the ages of two and four our conscious mind begins to develop, and it is during this time that our language skills are forged, and we begin to associate our meanings with a corresponding word. Quickly, we find that the same meaning can have a multitude of different words, and the same word can have many different meanings.

In determining which meaning a word has, we form our senses of "syntax" and "context." Syntax sounds like a scary word, but actually it is very simple and quite intuitive. "Syntax" really just refers to the order in which words appear. Context, on the other hand, is a far more complicated. Context determines the meaning of a particular word by comparing it to the previous meanings. Context is less intuitive and more subjective than syntax and, therefore, cannot be summed up by a simple set of rules.

Syntax: time and space

After learning that words have a corresponding meaning, syntax is one of the first things a child discovers in language. The meaning is only valid if the words are assembled in some sort of logical order. However, this order is not instinctual and must be learned. For example, in English adjectives come before nouns, so a child learns to say, "The red car." French is the opposite, so a child learns to say, "The car red." However, if that particular syntax is used in English, the child will probably get asked, "The car read what? A book?" Using the incorrect syntax completely changes the meaning associated with the word "red," changing it from an adjective into a verb.

Some languages are more syntax-oriented, and others are less. Latin relies far more on context than syntax, whereas English is a language in which syntax plays a crucial role in determining meaning. For example, in the sentence, "Mark helped Steve get out of his wheelchair," we immediately know who is helping and who is in the wheelchair, just by the order in which the words appear in the sentence.

We can tell what action is being taken, not only by which spatial words are being used, but also by the placement of the words. For instance, the previous example has a completely different meaning if I remove the preposition "of:" "Mark helped Steve get out his wheelchair." Now it means that Mark probably took it out of the closet. The meaning changes again if I simply move a single word to a different place: "Mark helped Steve get his wheelchair out." In this sentence, it is clear that Mark is probably helping Steve go outside the house.

Syntax forms about the age when humans develop a sense of space and time. Studies show that infants at this age will show the same reactions to a video, regardless of whether it is played forward or in reverse. As our grasp of syntax forms, we begin to realize that time appears to move in a direction, and always in the same direction. From this we develop our sense of space, forming concepts such as "from here to there," "from now to then," "from more to less," or "from stopped to moving." Once a child makes this distinction, they lose all interest in a video that's running backward. Our perception of reality actually is based on five aspects, which are "spatial" (our position relative to other things), "actional" (our position relative to our previous position), "temporal" (our position in time, relative to other actions), and "corporeal" (our understanding of quantity and intensity).

The fifth, and biggest of all, is the last to form, which is metaperceptional (our position as we believe others see it). The metaperceptional begins forming around the age of four and doesn't finish until the age of twenty-five, and it really forms the basis of our ability to communicate. As the child learns to speak to others, he/she learns that they have their own thoughts, feelings and understanding --independent of his own-- and it is up to him to understand, decipher, and anticipate what those thoughts and feelings are. To communicate, he realizes that he must follow their rules of syntax, or risk being misunderstood. We carry all of this knowledge of syntax into adulthood, although most people don't understand it in our language of words. Even with seemingly simple words, like "the," experts are still very challenged to define their syntax, although the use is very much understood "idiomatically" by native speakers of the language. If you see a sentence that doesn't quite look right, but you can't put your finger on what is wrong, pay close attention to the syntax. Chances are that it is a simple grammatical error which can easily be fixed.

Context: synonyms and homonyms

"There's a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure, 'cause you know sometimes words have two meanings." --Led Zeppelin

The exact choice of wording has a great effect on understandability. English is a complex language, yet that complexity makes it a very malleable and precisely descriptive language. Very little of English comes from the natives of England (the Welsh), but rather English is a language derived from many different conquerors, primarily consisting of a mix of Scandinavian, French, German, Pictish, Gaelic, and Latin, in that order of prevalence. Therefore, in English there are typically five or more different words that can convey any one meaning. Quite often, the same meaning can be delivered with many different phrases as well. These are called synonyms. For instance, the sentence, "Jon ran to the store," has the same meaning as "Jon ran to the market." It also has the same meaning as, "Jon sprinted to the store."

Now to make things even more complicated, every word typically has five or more different meanings. These are called homonyms. "Jon ran to the store" can mean either "Jon went jogging to the store," or "Jon drove his car to the store." It can also mean that "Jon drove to the mall," or "Jon drove to the gas station."

At first glance, it may seem that the more descriptive the sentence; the better the chance that it will not be misinterpreted. In general, the opposite can prove to be true. Adding more and more description to a sentence --the more words it has-- actually increases the chances that one of the words will convey the wrong meaning. Better is to use more-accurate description.

Fortunately, the exact meaning of a word is usually evident from the context. "Jon's car was almost out of gas. He ran to the store." In this example, within the context of the first sentence, the meaning of the second sentence becomes clear. The same is true for this example: "Jon wanted to get some exercise. He ran to the store." Now the second sentence takes on a whole new meaning, due to the context provided by the first sentence.

This sounds simple enough, but the problem is that, when speaking, our gestures often provide the context needed. If I say, "Jon ran to the store," while bobbing my fists in a running motion, the meaning will be different than if I say it while miming a grip on a steering wheel. As the writer of the above example, I know full well where Jon went, and how he got there. However, it is easy to forget that the reader may not have the context necessary to sort-out the many different meanings a sentence can have. In writing, it is mostly up to the writer to examine the work and to find and correct those unclear statements, which often carry two or more meanings simultaneously or, even worse, no meaning at all.

In writing, dual meanings often arise where we least expect them. For instance, here is an example about the medical uses of dye lasers:

"The wide range of wavelengths possible allows very close matching to the absorption lines of certain tissues, such as melanin or hemoglobin, while the narrow bandwidth obtainable helps limit the possibility of damage to the surrounding tissue."

If you're having trouble with this sentence, you're not alone. Based on the context, the word "limit" gives the sentence two entirely different meanings, depending on how you look at it. It is unclear whether the surrounding tissue is not damaged, or if it is the only thing that is damaged. A better, more-precise word to use would be "reduce."

"...the narrow bandwidth obtainable helps reduce the possibility of damage to the surrounding tissue."

Now it is clear that the surrounding tissue will probably not be damaged. Here is another example, on aerial combat in the early 1970s:

"During these dogfights, the effectiveness of air-to-air missiles proved to be only slightly better than in Vietnam, but often had trouble firing during high-g turns, tracking targets at low altitude, and could not be fired from any aspect angle, requiring pilots to maneuver onto the tail of their opponents."

Can you see the problem with this sentence? First, there is no way to tell from context what an "aspect angle" is. Second, there is apparently no way you could possibly fire a missile from one. Even if you already know what aspect angle means, ("The angle formed between the longitudinal axis of a projectile in flight and the axis of a radar beam."), this sentence may seem, to some, to be extremely contradictory. However, others may read it as it was intended by the author: That is, you could "shoot'em in the butt" but you couldn't "shoot'em in the lips."

To correct this problem, what first needs to be done is to locate the problem word or phrase. "Aspect angle" is obviously the correct terminology when talking about missiles, so it must be one of the words surrounding it. The word "any" has many homonyms, but, being used as an adjective, it can mean either: "One, some, every, or all without specification.", or, (as was intended in the example): "Exceeding normal limits, as in size or duration." If I choose that meaning, and change the word "any" to a synonym like "every," "each," or "all," the meaning of the sentence becomes clearer:

"...and could not be fired from all aspect angles, requiring pilots to maneuver onto the tail of their opponents."

Now it is clear from context that "getting on the opponents tail" is at least one aspect-angle. The point is that: Just because two words may be synonyms doesn't mean that they will always have the same homonyms. If a word has two homonyms that are compatible in the same sentence, then it is best to find a synonym for which, within the context, only one of its meanings will make sense. A simple way to check for coherency within the context is to try plugging in different synonyms, and see if the meaning of the sentence changes. A simple example is the sentence:

"You can use the information in Wikipedia any way you want."

To some, the word "information" in this sentence may not be clear. Information can mean "advice," "knowledge," or "syntax." (Wikipedia's own article on information gives a definition more related to syntax.) However, only one of these synonyms will fit into the sentence and still make sense.

Connotation and tone

To complicate things even further, many different synonyms have different connotations of the same meaning. "Peeved," "mad," "angry," "furious," and "irate" are good examples. Depending on context, the meaning conveyed is often different levels of the same emotion. "Jane was mad when Jon ran to the store, was furious when he didn't come right back, and was completely irate when he showed up the next day." Not only is it important to choose words based on the meaning they imply in context, but also choose them for the connotation they imply.

Connotation is one of the biggest things that helps give emotional context to the reader. Careful choice of descriptive words helps set the tone, and this is something that native English speakers do quite automatically. In most cases, whatever emotion a person is feeling at the time of writing, that emotion will usually be quite evident to the reader. This will occur whether it was intentional or not.

"I just happened by this article and thought it would be great to have a happy little conversation about it."

"Now you listen here. When I get into a conversation, the tone will be angry."

"Um, no. That's not the way things work here, at all. You should very well know that you need to use a condescending tone."

It takes a great deal of thought as to the connotations that a word might have, when found in a particular context, to keep a neutral tone. To do so is quite unnatural, and nearly everybody has to work at it to some degree.

In writing, it is extremely important to pay attention to connotation. In speaking, we also use connotation quite subconsciously, but it is mainly the tone of your voice that not only lets people know what your emotional state is, but also how they should react to it. Because the reader cannot actually hear the tone of your voice, connotation is all they have to represent your emotional state, and this causes a heightened response to it (similar to a blind man's hearing becoming heightened). Readers will often react much stronger to written connotations than they would to the same connotations if used in speech. (This is why it's very difficult to pull-off sarcasm or sardonicism in writing, requiring a little smiley-face :-) to let the reader know you're only joking.) Therefore, it is very important to judge your choice of words to keep from giving the wrong impression.

Punctuation: rhythm and melody

Punctuation is often one of the hardest things to master. Good writers tend to write in a very natural-sounding, spoken-manner. However, translating exactly how something is spoken into writing requires careful attention to punctuation.

Punctuation often seems very difficult. The main reason is that there are so many different rules involved; many of which contradict each other, either directly or indirectly. The use of periods and conjunctions seems fairly easy, but a person needs to pay attention to the overall rhythm that these things impart. Too many short, simple sentences give a very choppy rhythm. Most speakers of English will find that unpleasant but long, compound sentences filled with bare conjunctions tend to drone-on and read like they should be spoken with a monotone.

Like music, good writing will often have a rhythm to it. This rhythm typically repeats itself throughout, with some changes here or there. A typical rhythm might go: Short sentence, compound sentence, compound sentence, short. Or: Compound sentence, compound sentence, short sentence, short. Those are pretty simplistic examples, for there are almost an infinite number of variations possible. Readers will get used to a writer's rhythm very quickly, and the rhythm is very useful, because it helps them to follow along with fewer hang-ups. Abrupt changes in the rhythm tend to be the biggest cause of snags; many times requiring readers to go back and start the sentence all over again. The writer is very much leading a dance with the reader, and it is important not to drop anyone, or step on their toes.

Much neglected in writing is the good old comma, along with its cousins, the colon, semicolon, and hyphen. This is especially true where conjunctions are present. Just like periods and conjunctions, these things help to set the rhythm. However, these things have another major function; they set the tone changes. Take the following sentence, for example:

"Jon was walking through the woods over by the dog-park and he saw a bear feeding on some cranberries."

The tone is pretty flat, huh? Now add some commas to the same sentence:

"Jon was walking through the woods, over by the dog-park, and he saw a bear, feeding on some cranberries."

Did you notice how the tone of your voice changes when you come to a comma? What happened here is that the sentence now has melody. The long, compound sentence has been separated into its individual sentences, but without the choppy, monotone feel that inserting periods would have accomplished.

"Jon was walking through the woods. He was over by the dog park. He saw a bear. It was feeding on some cranberries."

That doesn't sound right, does it? It's too flat --almost robotic even-- with none of the tone changes that would be found if a person was actually speaking it. There is no melody.

The exact rules of punctuation are something I rarely get into. Once a person comes into their own rhythm and melody, the punctuation will usually be inserted automatically where it is needed. To a slight degree, too much is often better than not enough. The main key is to listen for those tone changes in your own voice, and punctuate accordingly.

Note relationships

Aside from simply forming a rhythm, forming a melody requires pointing-out certain relationships between the words. In musical terms, these would be called things like "ties," "slurs," "scoops," "dips," and "dives." In writing, however, these functions are mainly served by hyphens, colons, semicolons and sentence connectors.

Hyphen

A hyphen is used to tie two or more words together. This is essentially done to derive from them a single meaning. This is usually done just short of making them a compound word, like "whenever," which can help the reader to distinguish between the different meanings the words can have as individuals. For instance, if I say, "You should use more accurate description," the meaning of the sentence becomes unclear. Does it mean you should use an abundance of accurate description, or that the accuracy of your description should be increased? It becomes clear if I simply hyphenate the words, like this: "You should use more-accurate description." When spoken aloud, the hyphenated words are spoken as one, compound word, and it becomes clear that the description itself should be better. For the other meaning, I would write, "You should use more, accurate description."

Adjectives or nouns are the most commonly hyphenated words, but verbs and adverbs may also be. For example, to avoid the confusion described above, adjectives should rarely be placed side-by-side in a sentence. When more than one adjective is needed to describe a noun, they are usually separated by a comma.

Mark drove down the long, dark, dusty highway.

His tired, heavy eyelids became harder to keep open.

There is a common trend, though, to separate the adjectives with hyphens. However, the rule-of-thumb to remember is: If the adjectives all describe the noun, (big, red balloon), then commas should be used to separate them. Hyphens are only used when one adjective is being used to describe another adjective. An adjective is hyphenated with the noun when a single name is desired, but reading it would be too awkward if you make them a compound word.

The light-green car smashed into the great, big tanker-truck.

The fiery-hot, bright-yellow explosion shook the frosty morning-ground.

Unlike a comma or a dash, hyphens are not used to separate words but, rather, they are used to connect two or more words to derive a single meaning.

Semicolons and colons

A semicolon is used to connect a "clause," or an incomplete sentence, to another clause or to a complete sentence. The function is similar to that of the hyphen, except you're connecting clauses instead of individual words. The clause will generally be read as if it overlaps the sentence; merely an extension of the whole meaning. Two clauses, added together, may give a complete idea without ever forming a complete sentence. "The more; the merrier."

On the other hand, a colon is used to separate a clause from a sentence. Colons are mainly used to introduce something, indicating that the reader should take note of the change in style. Many uses of colons include: Introducing a list, a definition, a problem, an example, or a reason. Unlike a semicolon, which ties the clauses together, a colon's purpose is: Colons provide a rather dramatic stop in the text, giving the reader a moment to prepare for the list or definition that is about to follow.

Sentence connectors

Sentence connectors do exactly what their name implies: They connect entire sentences together, making clear how those sentences relate to each other. Sentence connectors come in two forms, but their jobs are almost identical. These are either conjunctions or adverbs.

Conjunctions are used to literally connect the sentences together, eliminating the period and, perhaps, the main noun. Most people are familiar with the three major conjunctions, especially if you remember School-house rock. These are "and," "but," and "or." It is easy to see how these show the relationship between the sentences. "This and that." "This or that." "Not this but that." However, there are many, many other conjunctions as well, such as "so," "now," "although," "while," and "albeit." These conjunctions are all useful in showing the relationships between sentences, while at the same time joining them into a compound sentence. Conjunctions are also vital in helping to establish a rhythm.

Conjunctions also perform the same function on even smaller scales. Conjunctions are used to connect clauses, phrases or words, but they also show the relationship between these things. "I'll take two apples and a pear." "I want a seat near the back but not near a window." "I need some quiet so move on."

On the other hand, certain adverbs and "phrasal verbs" are often used to show the connection between sentences, without actually connecting them. With these, the sentences remain individual statements, separated by a period, but the latter sentence will often begin with the sentence connector. These are words like "however," "therefore," "thus," "conversely," "respectively," or phrases like, "on the other hand," or "even so." These words are also very useful in establishing the relationship between sentences, illustrating how they tie together. These are placed, typically, at the beginning of the latter sentence, but they sometimes may also be placed in the middle. However, although these words are adverbs, when used as sentence connectors, the verbs they describe are from the former sentence of the pair. Therefore, they are always separated from the latter sentence using commas.

Lesser forms of punctuation

Some forms of punctuation are used to a far lesser extent than periods, conjunctions, and commas. With these, a little more care is necessary, because it's easy to overuse them. Most are used to provide over or under-emphasis. These types of punctuation are very useful because they give both heightened emotion and emphasis, where it is called for, but overuse can lead to the writing-version of overacting. A beautifully worded sentence can quickly look like a bad line from a B-movie, just by using too much emphasis.

• Exclamation point ! -- This is a frequently overused mark. The exclamation point is like a period that is used to show excitement. However, the mark emphasizes the last word in the sentence. "Jon still isn't home!" Notice how the emphasis is on the word "home?" How often does a person actually do that in speech? "I'm so glad you brought popcorn!" "Jacob punched Freddie, and broke his pencil!" Now does anyone really get that excited over popcorn and pencils? Unless you really want the emphasis to be on that last word, it's usually better to let the connotations emphasize themselves.

• Question mark ? -- Question marks are also periods that put the emphasis on the last word of the sentence. Unlike with exclamation points, this is how people usually speak. "Did you see Jon?" "Where was he?" However, questions are usually evident from the words that begin them. Different emotional context can be added by using a period or exclamation point to end a question, such as extreme concern, "Why doesn't Jon come home!" or apathy, "Why did he lie to me." Keep in mind that a question ending in a period will usually be rhetorical.

• Parentheses () -- Have you ever cupped your hand by your mouth to whisper something to the guy next to you. Parentheses give the same sort of under-emphasis. These generally indicate that what is being said within them, (while it may be a point of interest), is not really necessary information. More often than not, parentheses, and the information within them, can be cut. Parentheses should be used lightly, because they really give the feeling that you're whispering in the reader's ear.

• Quotation marks "" -- Quotation marks are used to indicate that someone other than the author said something. Quotation marks take the reader out of their own voice and into another's. Quotes can be the direct narrative of someone else, or they can be used to highlight "jargon," which are terms that have a very specific meaning within a particular field. A brief explanation of the term should be provided just before or after highlighting it. Quotation marks can also be used like this to highlight words that are being discussed, showing that they are not being used in the sentence. ""I" before "e" except after "c," or when sounding like "a" as in "neighbor" and "weigh.""

• All-capitals ALL-CAPS -- All-capitals is the writing-version of SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS!!!! Whenever possible, all-caps should be followed with MANY EXCLAMATION-POINTS!!!! All-caps almost always implies HOSTILITY AND ANGER!!!! It tends to go best with a VERY SHORT AND CHOPPY RHYTHM!!!! All-caps are often used mistakenly by people who want to apply emphasis to certain words or phrases, but are not sure how to do so with tone instead of volume. Except in the case of acronyms, all-caps should be avoided at all cost ... unless, that is, you really, really want to come-off immediately as a DERANGED, PSYCHOPATHIC LUNATIC!!!!

• Words capitalized Word Caps -- Unnecessarily capitalizing words in the middle of a sentence can have an effect similar to all-caps. It's a little more like Shouting At The Reader rather than SCREAMING AT THEM. Most people, however, Will Find This Very Annoying. Unless it is done deliberately and sparingly for dialogue, most will not grasp the intended emphasis, and will simply think you're a bad speller.

• Bolding Bolding -- Bolding is a less aggressive way to apply emphasis to certain words or phrases. However, bolding is a bit invasive to the general flow of the text, and typically gives the feel of shouting at the reader rather than simply giving a bit of extra emphasis. Bolding is best used at the beginning of the text, especially when defining the bolded words. However, although it is better than word-caps, it should be used very sparingly and carefully in the midst of the text.

• Italics Italics -- To provide emphasis on certain words or phrases, italics are most often used instead of bolding, word-caps or all-caps. Italics is less invasive to the text, but is just as easy to spot as bolded text. Therefore, it doesn't disrupt the flow and gives emphasis in the feeling of slightly elevated volume. These, too, should be used lightly.

• Dash -- I won't bother to delve into em-dash versus en-dash theory. Let the copy editors and typesetters work that out. (I just type two hyphens and be done with it.) A dash is often used to separate something from another, such as a heading from the text. It can also be used to separate, say ... number pages in a book; often with the meaning "through." (i.e.: Page 212 through 215.) However, dashes can also be used to apply distinct emphasis to phrases or entire sections of a sentence. These are usually used in place of commas, semi-colons or parentheses --only where a lot of emphasis is needed-- such as a major point in an argument. To avoid that "Captain Kirk overacting" type-feeling for the reader, these should also be used sparingly.

• Ellipsis ... -- The ellipsis has many functions, and quite a few specific rules, so bear with me here. The main function of ellipses, to use a musical term, is as a "suspension," or, say ... a dramatic pause in the text. They can be used for suspense: "Oh, I'm sorry Jenny ... you've won!" They can be used to indicate that a thought or dialogue just trailed off to... They can also be used to indicate that a quote is not whole, and has had some text omitted. If, for some reason, text is omitted in the middle of a quote, an ellipsis is used to show that to the reader, but is spaced from the text: "I will describe in extreme detail every aspect of my vacation ... but, suffice it to say, I had fun." If text is omitted from the beginning or the end of the quote, the ellipsis precedes or follows the text with no space: "...and that, my friends, is why the chicken crossed the road." However, if text is omitted in the middle of a quote, but after the end of a sentence, the ellipsis follows the period, with no space: "I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about this system and how it operates.... As you can see, all you really need to do is sit here and push the red button if anything goes wrong." Be careful with ellipses because too much suspense will lose its impact, and you'll begin to sound like a "reality" game-show host.

• Contractions n't -- The use of contractions in encyclopedic writing can be summed up with one word: Don't.

• Tilde ~ -- In Wikipedia, tildes are used to sign your name. This is very important during talk-page discussions, or else no one would know who is saying what. In writing, however, the tilde is used to indicate an inexact statement. It is very similar to the hand gesture people make when they say "around," and is usually used in conjunction with numbers. "The sun is ~ 9 million miles away."

Constructing paragraphs

When writing, you will have information you wish to convey, and then you will need to show how it relates to other information. The former can be called your "introduction sentence" and the latter is your "summary sentence." In between are the sentences that show how the two relate, or the "content sentences." Basically, when writing a paragraph, you are creating a starting point, a pathway, and an ending point. When this end-point is reached, it's time to begin a new paragraph. The summary sentence will usually show how the paragraph relates to the next paragraph.

Careful attention should be given to where paragraph breaks are made, as that will drastically affect the reader’s ability to follow the pathway you're creating. For example, imagine an entire article with no paragraph breaks. It would soon become impossible for the reader to tell which point is leading to which other point, and they will soon become lost. These starting and end-points are like road signs, guiding the reader from the main starting-place, in the lede, to the final summary at the end of the article.

Foreshadowing: structure and comprehension

"In this introductory chapter, the fundamental processes and the main ideas behind laser operation are introduced in a very simple way. The properties of laser beams are also briefly discussed. The main purpose of this chapter is thus to introduce the reader to many of the concepts that will be discussed in the following chapters, and therefore to help the reader to appreciate the logical organization of this book." --Orazio Svelto (Principles of lasers)

Foreshadowing is used to give an indication of something that is about to come. Foreshadowing is a term that is used very often in fiction writing, but it also occurs in non-fiction writing, and will tend to penetrate the writing at nearly every level. Foreshadowing gives the reader a meaning that, while it may be somewhat vague and simple, provides the reader with context for further information.

Foreshadowing is a lesson on the basic inner-workings of the human mind. The brain is very much like a computer, and while we might not know exactly how it operates; humans have been studying how the mind functions for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The brain receives a phenomenal amount of information every second. This information must be sorted, cataloged, and filed away very quickly. Much like a computer, the mind creates files and, within those, sub-files, which are all neatly labeled for quick access later. However, the brain receives information in a non-linear fashion, and every word, name, letter or sound must first have a meaning before it is comprehensible. In this way, unlike a computer (which has no need for comprehension), the mind files information under meaning, rather than meaning under information. This is definitely not how information is normally filed in our outer-world. In other words, the mind doesn't set up titles or subject-headings and then place the meaning under them, in the way that an encyclopedia is organized. The mind establishes a meaning, and places the titles and subject-headings under it.

That's almost incomprehensible at first. Think of it like this: Have you ever had a thought on the tip of your tongue, but couldn't find the words to express it? We don't initially or naturally think in words but, rather, we think in terms of sensory input and meaning. This is our subconscious mind, and must be translated into language by the conscious. Because our brains work in a non-linear fashion, our information is best received in such a way. Think of a small child who caused some mischief, telling a ready-made excuse. The linear nature of their stories always gives away the lie.

The question that many people might ask would be, then why don't we write like that? The answer is that, when writing is done correctly, we do. For instance, when writing an article, we start with a title, but for the reader this is just a keyword, carrying no meaning. The title is immediately followed by a lede and, voila, your brain has a meaning to start filing information under. The introduction section follows, and the meaning is further expanded into sub-meanings, (the brain's version of sub-files), into which further information can be stored. In writing, this is what is called foreshadowing, that is, giving the meaning in the most direct way possible, with the expectation that it will be expanded upon later.

Foreshadowing may best be thought of as setting-up a table-of-contents in the readers mind. An introduction section is helpful, because it sets the lay-out for the rest of the article. Not only should this be done in the beginning of the article, but it is a process that should be repeated throughout. Nearly every section should have an introduction paragraph, to give both the meaning and lay-out for the following paragraphs. Every paragraph should start with an introduction sentence, which performs the same function for the paragraph. These little bits-of-meaning are the mind's sub-files, and it is under these bits-of-meaning that the information is placed.

For the reader, the use of foreshadowing takes-out several of the steps involved in filing away this information. The use of foreshadowing to create a structure is simply the presentation of information a more usable, non-linear order, and this allows easier comprehension of what is being read. It also makes it easier for the writer, because these introductions help to keep the writer on point. These introductions not only cause the writer to define what the section or paragraph will be about, but also how the information to follow will be arranged.

The basic structure appears as follows:

Title: Example structure

Lede -- The lede quickly defines the subject. The first paragraph or two are the only things elementary-school students will probably read, so it should be short, simple and written at a Grade 6 level, yet concisely define the subject. The lede is a basic dictionary definition.

Introduction

The introduction section follows the lede, expanding on, but not really repeating what is in the lede. The introduction section should be from three to seven paragraphs, because this is typically all the middle and high-school students will read. It should be written at a Grade 10 level. The introduction section begins with an introduction paragraph, defining the article, and is followed by content paragraphs, briefly describing each section in the body of the article. A summary paragraph may follow, often with examples.

Section one

The first section begins with the aspects described in the first content-paragraph of the introduction section. The first section should also have an intro-paragraph, content paragraphs, and a summary paragraph, although summary paragraphs are optional.

Section two

The second section begins with aspects described in the second content-paragraph of the intro section, or possibly from the second point in the first paragraph. It should also have an intro-paragraph, content paragraphs, and a summary paragraph. Further sections follow this pattern.

Summary section

A summary section is also optional, but should summarize the article, and is also a good place to put examples.

Information: questions and order-of-importance

Information can be defined by many aspects, such as information theory, cognitive reasoning, theory of mind, etc... However, for the purposes of writing, information can be defined as: Anything that answers a question. There are different types of questions, and even different categories of questions, such as permissive: "May I have a glass of water?" In writing, however, the questions you're seeking to answer will usually be inquisitive questions. These inquisitive questions seek information related to things like the what, the where, and the how of a story. Inquisitive question always begin with one of six words, all of which may be modified by a seventh, (or by any number of versions of that seventh word). These words are the what, where, when, who, how, why, and do (does/did, is/are/was, will/would, shall/should, can/could, etc...). A simple example of this is the game Jeopardy, where the answer is given, and players must give the question. "Who is Alex Trebek?"

The first five questions in the list ask for factual information. The question "why" is almost unique, as it asks for an opinion. The question "do," by itself, usually asks for opinions on personal desires. "Do you want some ice cream?" However, when modifying another question, it usually asks for opinions of a particular nature: "Do you know where my other sock is?" "How do they disappear right out of the dryer?"

When answering the reader's questions about a subject, it is important to pay attention to the order-of-importance that questions have. Oftentimes, we think the most important answer is the information which seems most interesting to us at the time. However, questions have their own order-of-importance. It is easy to forget this when you're on the giving-end of information, but becomes more apparent when on the receiving-end. For example, if a friend runs up and says, "Did you hear the news?", your first response will be:

"What?" "A pedestrian was hit by a car."

"Where?" "Just down the street."

"When?" "About ten minutes ago."

"Who?" "It was Jon."

"How!" "I don't know. The car jumped the curb and onto the sidewalk, smashing into a telephone pole. Jon's alive, but they rushed him to the hospital with minor injuries. The driver died on impact."

"Why?" "I believe the driver was drunk."

"What was that guy thinking, getting behind the wheel?" "Only God knows."

Order-of-importance may be modified by the answer to the first question. If, in the above example, the answer to the question "what" was, "Someone you know was hit by a car.", then the next most-important question becomes "who." However, this order rarely strays too far from the standard, and the first question always answers the what.

Keeping information in the expected order not only puts the most important answers first, but, as a part of structure, it also aids the reader in retaining the information. As an example, you will almost never hear a news report start off like this:

"At 6:00 AM on Saturday, because a new gaming system was being released and the crowd was very anxious for the doors to open, at the North Town Mall on 6th avenue where people had camped all night, three people were trampled by a stampede of shoppers."

Who is going to remember a story that was delivered all backwards like that? "When," "why," "where," "who" and "what" is not the correct order. Compare that to how interesting the story becomes in the correct order:

"Three people were trampled by a stampede of shoppers at the North Town Mall on Saturday. The stampede occurred at 6:00 AM, as the doors opened, by a crowd of people who had camped outside all night, because they were anxiously awaiting the release of a new gaming system."

In combining order-of-importance with the structure of foreshadowing, it becomes apparent that the lede is purely for answering the most important question: The what. The introduction expands upon the what, delving briefly into the where, when, who and how. However, the really technical "how," and the opinions (the why) are usually saved for the body of the text, along with expansions on all the other questions in their order-of-importance.

Opinion versus fact

There seems to be some misunderstandings out in the world about the differences between opinions and facts, and the definitions of the words.

A Fact is defined as:

"A truth that can be proven." "Verifiable truth." "Reality." "Detail of an event or action." "Something that truly exists."

Synonyms - Verity (as in, verifiability), evidence, substantiality, actuality.

Antonyms - Lie, untruth

An Opinion is defined as:

"A personal belief or judgment that is not founded on proof or certainty." "A belief that may or may not be backed up with evidence, but which cannot be proved with that evidence." "A thought that a person has formed about a topic or issue."

Synonyms - Point of view (POV), viewpoint, view, conjecture, assumption, feeling, guess, inference, idea, hypothesis, theory, notion, say-so, surmise, fancy.

Antonyms - Reality, truth, fact

Why is this distinction important in non-fiction writing?

Nearly all non-fiction writing relies on journalistic style, to keep the presentation of information clear, concise, and coherent. This format of writing has its roots in the ancient Greek traditions, and received great study on the nature of vagueness in the middle ages. Dictionaries were invented, to keep the meanings of words both consistent and sourceable. Many philosophies have been combined and melded into what is now known the "philosophy of language." The purpose is to convey information in a way that is the least subject to misinterpretation.

Journalistic style should not be confused with journalism itself. The style is used in all forms of non-fiction writing, with the exception of literary journalism, for the very purposes of clarity.

All information can be divided into two categories: Truth and fiction. Naturally, an encyclopedia will want to avoid the latter at all costs, being non-fiction writing. This leaves only the truth. (I know all about wikipolicy, so please just hear me out on this.) Truth, however, is a tricky subject. Truth not only deals in physical properties, which are called attributes, but also in judgments about the meanings of those attributes, called reasoning. These judgments come in many forms, as ideas, notions, theories, and conclusions. For simplification, journalistic style divides the so-called "truth" into two distinct categories, labeled: Fact and opinion.

Facts are observable and, therefore, recordable phenomena. Facts are information which can be verified, either through original research, or through reliable sourcing. The latter is the most common way to resolve conflicts, and the only way which should be used in an encyclopedia. Facts have the ability to be verified in reliable sources, and that veracity can be verified in other sources. This ability to be "doubly sure" is vital to improving accuracy.

The problem is: Very little of what we know to be reality is based on facts. Humans are separated from all other animals in our ability to reason ... to ask the question why, and it is the answer to this question --this search for motive-- which forms the basis for much of what we believe to be truth. However, the very nature of reasoning is: It only exists within the mind. As such, the reason for anything can never really be verified, or even documented. A reason is an opinion, or ... a belief. Therefore, your truth --your reality-- may be quite different from mine, which may differ from the next guy's, and so on. (Believe it or not, according to quantum physics, this may be truer than we can even conceive.)

However, although opinions themselves cannot be verified, every opinion has verifiable facts that we can attribute to it. We can answer what it is and where it came from without stating that it is either right or wrong. We can also find opposing opinions and counter-arguments, and give them fair coverage. We can do this, even with opinions which we may find repugnant, because those cannot be proven either. This allows an encyclopedia, which are all constructed from diverse groups of individuals, to be presented in a neutral, unbiased manner.

This also allows us to present the facts of the opinion accurately, by checking one report against another.

So how can we tell fact from opinion? As mentioned in the previous section, any information serves the purpose of answering a question. Journalistic writing divides all questions into these seven categories: The what, where, when, who, how, why, and does/do(is/are/was...). The answer to the first five will always be factual, and this is true regardless of whether the information is correct or not, (although, if the information turns-out to be false, it's fict, not fact). The answer to the last two are opinions, for which there is no right or wrong. A person's opinion is just that --their opinion-- and as long as the facts about it are correct, there is no need to support or refute it; all that is needed is to present it with balance.

Whether you call them facts and opinions, or the synonyms: verities and views, the distinction is still the same. Being able to identify information helps determine not only the reliability of sources, but also the information which we can present accurately. It also helps us identify information which cannot be verified, and to present that information with fairness.

Concision: writing as math

"Few realize that the ease of reading varies inversely about as the square of easy writing,... This is especially true of subjects which can be treated mathematically; the scientific world has immense reverence for anything you can put in mathematical language, though it needs much more ability and a clearer head to put it in words." --James Swinburne (Entropy: or, Thermodynamics from an engineer's standpoint)

One thing I've noticed over the years is that math is often difficult for writers and, similarly, writing is often difficult for mathematicians. I was in my early twenties when I finally figured-out where pi came from. (The simple explanation that it's a ratio meant nothing to me without a clear, mechanical description.) Around that time, after reading several books on math, I finally figured-out trigonometry by reading a single paragraph: An entry about trigonometry --in a dictionary-- of all places. Who would've guessed it? All of those wonderfully difficult math books were condensed into a simple, concise paragraph. This puzzled me, so I looked into it deeper. Math, it turns out, is language and language is math. The problem is: there are many different languages, and those proficient in one may not be in others.

Something all languages have in common are the same basic functions. A word like "is" has the same function as the math symbol "=" just as "and" means "+." The word "by" refers to multiplication and "per" to division. Algebra (the bane of many students) is nothing more than "word problems." We use it every day, when budgeting our grocery list or timing our busy-schedule to correspond with the kid's school play. Algebra is not about finding the answer as much as it's about finding how to ask the question.

In language, we constantly make equations. The first sentence in this very paragraph is an "expression." In mathematics, an expression is a group of symbols that represent a certain quality or relationship. (You may notice that less than half of my paragraphs begin with an expression.) However, the second sentence in this paragraph is an "equation." An equation is a pair of expressions separated by an equal sign (is/are/was), stating that both expressions represent the same thing. By now, you may notice that the third sentence is also an equation, but the parenthetical statement following it is an expression. All language is a coherent stream of expressions and equations, with the goal being to convey information precisely and concisely.

Math is usually thought of as a very direct sort of language, whereas English is a very round-about language. However, neither is always true. In writing, just as in math, the aim is for elegance. Precision is often lost in unnecessarily lengthy and tedious formulas, and the same is true for writing. The main goal is to get straight to the point; go immediately for the heart of the matter, and then branch out from there. "V=IR" -- Now that's simple and elegant. Voltage is amperage overcoming resistance! In writing that same sort of simplicity and elegance is helpful. Adding unnecessary description or uncommon words in the hopes of greater precision and understandability often has the opposite effect. In carefully formulating your sentences, it is important to be aware of concision as well as context, connotation, rhythm, melody, presentation, and organization.

Cohesion: the glue of understandability

Everything I have written up to this point is aimed at one goal; creating prose that is interesting and understandable to the reader. All of the previous subsections cover the different aspects which make writing coherent, but none of that does much good without finally understanding what this mysterious phrase "coherent writing" means. In this summary subsection, I will give a very brief explanation of the term, and describe why it is so important.

Cohesion literally means: "sticking together." This is opposed to adhesion, which means: "sticking to something else." What this means in writing is that the thoughts and information you wish to convey need to be ordered and tied together, meaningfully passing from one thought leading to the next. This is referred to as "flow" and, much like a liquid, writing requires cohesion to flow in a meaningful direction. The alternative is like a gas; scattering, randomness, and flowing in seemingly all directions without any discernible end-point. The goal is to keep information flowing in a definite direction with a clear end-point in sight.

The writer is in direct communication with the reader. For any complex communication to work effectively, the reader must be able to anticipate the writer's end-point well before it is made. In most cases, after reading just a couple of sentences you will already have a good idea of where the paragraph is going. (You wouldn't come along for the ride if you didn't, would you?) This is called "theory of mind," because, as you read, you are quickly forming a theory about my mind, my needs, and my intentions. This sort of "anticipation of outcome" is vital to our ability to communicate as humans. In fact, the key ingredient in most jokes is the setting-up of one outcome in the reader's mind and then delivering a completely unexpected, yet humorous, outcome.

The main problem is that we don't usually think coherently. Our brains are constantly dealing with a barrage of information, both from within and without. There are constant conflicts and debates going on between different areas of the mind, each trying to give its say and each trying to lead the conversation off along its own path. (Does that sound familiar ... perhaps like a certain community?) It is very easy to get side-tracked onto some tangent or begin to ramble. The difficulty rests in separating this random "stream of consciousness" into coherent thoughts, and then stringing those together into coherent sentences, coherent paragraphs, and, ultimately, coherent articles. The main point of keeping things coherent is so that the readers have a definite idea of where you're coming from, a good idea which way you're taking them, and some idea where they will end up, all of which is vital for understandable communication.

To sum it up, if you want the information to adhere to the reader it must first cohere with itself.

Style

Style is the collection of mannerisms that come together in a piece of writing, which differ in appropriateness depending on the context and the expectations of the audience. Writing styles come in four basic forms, each of which has their own subset of forms. However, before describing all of these forms, an important question needs to be answered: What is a writing style?

Style is simply a way of speaking or behaving that you do in certain situations. It's more than just how you dress or appear to others, but how you conduct yourself in their presence. For instance, at a large family-gathering, you will likely be very friendly with people, but unconsciously may use words like "please" and "thank you" more often or refrain from using colorful language. On the other hand, when talking with your best friends, you may decide to let go, poke fun, and use slang. However, at a job interview you would likely keep things very formal, using a standardized form of the language. For each of these situations people will usually change their style of speaking, and this is really no different for writing. In this essay, I'm using a rather informal style, but trying not to get too informal. In encyclopedic writing, the style used is much more formal.

Writing consists of four main styles: Narrative, persuasive, descriptive, and expository. Although all writing has some form of narrative, "narrative writing" is a particular style of writing used most often in fiction. Narrative writing is character-based writing, in which the primary focus of the writing is on the emotions, struggles and triumphs of the characters. Narrative writing lets the reader see through the eyes of the characters. Narrative writing pays little attention to subjects and, therefore, is avoided in most non-fiction writing. The exception to this are those Ken Burns-type documentaries, or other forms of "literary journalism."

Persuasive writing is exactly what it sounds like; writing meant to persuade someone to a particular set of beliefs. Persuasive writing is filled with the opinions of the author, often melded with facts, but sometimes combined with fiction in order to make a point. Persuasive writing is what is known on Wikipedia as "POV pushing," and should be avoided for obvious reasons. These are known to the outside world as opinion/editorial (op/ed) pieces. On the extreme ends of this you can find the yammering of people like Rush Limbaugh or Arianna Huffington, which are transparent as glass. (The only things more comical are the political advertisements and debates, reflecting the nature of the politicians themselves.) However, persuasive writing comes in all forms in between, from the editor of your local newspaper to the scientists in search of string theory.

Descriptive writing is also an aspect of fiction writing, although it is sometimes used in non-fiction. Although all writing has some description, descriptive writing revolves around the description. Short, simple descriptions are usually cast aside for long descriptions filled with glorious adjectives, abounding in every sentence, saturating the story in a wealth of hues, contours, intensities, expanses and essences. Break out your thesaurus, because in descriptive writing it's helpful to know a lot of synonyms, for saying simple adjectives like "red" all the time just won't cut it.

The last is expository writing, and most non-fiction writing falls into this category. Expository writing is just like it sounds: It exposes whatever it is discussing. Expository writing is subject-oriented writing. Expository writing does not concern itself with the subject's emotions or personal desires. More importantly, expository writing does not concern itself with the opinions, judgments or desires of the author. Expository writing simply lays out the facts (including the facts about notable opinions) and lets the reader make their own judgments or conclusions.

Sub-styles

Expository writing can be further broken into sub-categories, such as technical, academic, journalistic, or encyclopedic.

Technical writing is most concerned with the how. Technical writing often tends to be short and concise, sometimes to the point of being too concise. Technical writing is usually filled with jargon which will not usually be explained to the reader, so the reader must typically have some substantial background knowledge of the subject in order to follow along.

In this paragraph, we will discuss the qualities and properties found in academic writing. The use of synonyms and schematics will also be discussed. Academic writing is used with the utmost of formality, regarding the subject in the greatest of detail. Academic writing can be compared to a juxtaposition between technical writing and descriptive writing. Again, we have found through the creation of academic works that a thesaurus is required, because it is important to impress other academics with your utilization of many large words and overtly long and tedious sentences. In academic writing, a lot of references will be made to drawings or schematics which accompany the work (see Fig. 6.2), and to the works of other people in the field. Like technical writing, academic writing relies heavily on jargon, but goes far deeper into description. As mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph, academic writing will often refer to the writing itself, pointing out things which the reader already read.

Journalistic style is typically found in most works of nonfiction. Journalistic writing is a fairly formal style of writing, but not too formal. Journalists like to be seen as just regular people, reporting on stuff that would interest a large portion of society. The best journalists hold themselves to a high degree of integrity, and are people with great principles, faithfully representing all sides and never letting their own views slip through. (Note: "Best" does not necessarily mean the most popular or highest paid, but often quite the opposite.) Journalistic style was often favored in times of war, especially after the invention of the telegraph, because it gets the most important information across as quickly as possible, and then elaborates.

Encyclopedic style is very much like journalistic style, only a lot more formal. Much more attention is paid to grammar and sentence structure, or other nit-picky things like that. The difference between the two is something like the difference between the family gathering and the corporate meeting. Unlike in academic style, in encyclopedic writing, the writing must be able to stand on its own, without the use of pictures, graphs or schematics to support it. These things, albeit nice to have, should not become the focal points of the writing, but the writing should make just as much sense if they were removed. The writing should never refer to the pictures nor the writing itself, and the simplest of words or phrases should be used, making it understandable to a general audience. In other words, the writer should aim for the most precise yet concise phrasing, focusing on the subject, not the details.

Narrative perspective

In writing, there are three narrative perspectives from which to choose. Both fiction and non-fiction writing can make use of these perspectives, although two are used almost exclusively for professional writing. Non-fiction almost always uses the perspective called first person narrative, while fiction almost always uses the third person. Rarely does any professional writing use the second person narrative, which is found most often in direct letters or emails to people. However, encyclopedic writing doesn't really follow with this standard. Before I explain why, I will first give a brief explanation of these perspectives.

Most nonfiction writing is done in the "first person." First person narrative is where I, the narrator, speak directly to the audience as myself. I will use words like "I" and "me" to refer to myself, but the audience is treated as ambiguous, as if I'm speaking to an entire lecture hall full of students. I usually won't refer to them at all, but simply speak to them as if I'm telling my own story, not really caring who is listening. This is how most journalism, technical and academic non-fiction writing is done. One problem many non-fiction writers encounter, when working on an encyclopedia, is trying to write in this perspective.

There is a second type of narrator perspective, called "second person." Second person is how I chose to write this essay. Second person is how we normally talk to other people in our daily lives. I, the narrator, am speaking directly to you, the reader. Instead of using just personal pronouns, I'm also using pronouns that refer directly to the reader, such as "you" and "we." Second person is rarely used in either fiction or non-fiction writing. I chose it for this essay because I wanted to provide a friendly atmosphere, where is seems like I'm having a direct conversation with you. More importantly, I didn't want this essay to read like an article. It should be noted that other words or phrases, like "it should be noted," "consider," or "imagine," are all instructions for the reader and, therefore, turn the writing into second person. Consider avoiding them.

The third narrator perspective is called "third person." This is most often used in fiction writing and is often avoided by non-fiction writers. However, an encyclopedia is written in the third person. This means that the narrator is just as ambiguous as the audience. Pronouns such as "I" or "you" are never used. Instead, the narrator is just some voice, talking to no one in particular. There are three ways to do a third-person perspective. One is called "third-person omniscient," while the next is called "third-person limited," and the last is called "third-person objective." Encyclopedic writing uses the last type.

Third-person omniscient is where the narrator is all-knowing about the story. The narrator can describe all of the character's thoughts, feelings and emotions, as if being able to read their minds. This is often described as being a "god-like" voice, speaking only so that others may choose to hear. Because this is impossible in real life, this type of narrative is left strictly for fiction, where imagination can trump rational thought.

Third-person limited occurs when the narrator is omniscient about only one of the characters. The story is not told from the character's perspective, such as in first person, but the god-like voice only reveals the thoughts and emotions of one character. This may or may not be the main character of the story. (A good example is Sherlock Holmes, told from the third person but only revealing the thoughts and feelings of Dr. Watson.) Again, this perspective is avoided in non-fiction writing, because it is impossible to actually know another person's internal thoughts, even by directly quoting them.

Third-person objective happens when the narrator is just some outside voice, telling the story as witnessed by their own five senses. The narrator is privy to none of the internal thoughts and emotions of the characters, but only reports what they can see or hear from outward appearances. The narrator does not take sides, nor does the narrator make any judgments about the story. The narrator simply reports what information they can gather by their senses, which, in the case of Wikipedia, is what we can gather from the sources. In encyclopedic writing, it is very important to write in the third-person objective, because you are not merely one person talking to an audience, but, rather, we are a community of people (editors and writers) coming together to check and double check each other's work. The third person gives the reader the sense that such due diligence has been done.

Spatial perspective

Another aspect of narrative perspective is spatial perspective. This refers to how we describe the orientation, motion, and direction of the world around us, using things like adverbs, verbs and prepositions. Spatial perspective comes in three different forms, which are egocentric, allocentric, and perspective-free.

An egocentric perspective describes the world in relation to the narrator's point of view. "Up ahead is Belgium. The people there are very friendly, and they are always glad to help the people over here." It is nearly impossible to write in the third person while using and egocentric perspective because the "god-like voice" should be everywhere at once, thus should have no perspective of its own. What this actually does is turn the writing into first person, even though no personal pronouns were used.

An allocentric perspective describes the world relative to the reader's point of view. "Left of the Monroe Building is a gas station. Right around the corner is where the hotel is." This form of writing also should be avoided in an encyclopedia, because it really turns it into second person.

Perspective-free writing is what is needed to keep a third person narrative. In perspective-free, the writing should assume no location of either the narrator nor the reader. Instead, the world is described using a global system of directions or coordinates. "Ma & Pa's Shopping Center is three miles north of Springston County Fairgrounds, following Chesterfield road."

Temporal perspective

Temporal perspective is an aspect of narrative perspective, and it deals with the narrator's position in time. There are four ways to do temporal perspective, which are future, present, past, and perfect.

In a future perspective, the narrator is positioned in the past. This is done using future-tense verbs and adverbs, referring to present events as if they were future events. "The Japanese will attack Pearl Harbor, and bring the US into the war." It is extremely difficult to write from a future perspective, because it sounds like a prediction of the future. "The new drug will soon begin testing, but has already been released in Europe." This perspective is usually only found in the dialog of the story (i.e.: from the character's perspective).

Present perspective is done with the narrator speaking from the present. The narrator can discuss the present, recount the past, and make predictions (mere speculation) about the future, using all verb forms: Present, past, future, and perfect tense. "The new movie is being released today, and it will be a hit." Present perspective is fine for correspondence. However, like the real present, it is fleeting. Although it has meaning today, tomorrow it will be meaningless and it will turn into future perspective. "Current research is beginning to show a correlation between smoking and cancer." Therefore this perspective is avoided in non-fiction writing, although it also can be used for dialog.

Past perspective places the narrator in the future, looking back on the past. In this perspective, the narrator does not predict the future, but recounts the past events as memories, using past-tense verbs and adverbs. "After the meeting ended, all of the executives went home." Past perspective is how most journalism is done. However, this perspective relies greatly on context to show exactly when something happened. "Yesterday, the King's army surrounded the castle and pounded it with catapults." Therefore, this method is also fleeting, and is usually left to the newspapers, where information changes daily.

Things like books and encyclopedias are meant to last, staying meaningful over long periods of time. For this reason, perfect perspective is used. Perfect perspective, or "timeless perspective," occurs when the narrator speaks as if outside of time looking in. In this case, adverbs like "yesterday," "today" or "tomorrow," are never used. Instead, these are replaced with actual dates and times, and all verb forms may be used, provided they fit into the context. "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He would arrive in America many months later, believing it to be India." In this way, the writing will retain its meaning over time.

Fractal formatting: the large and small

A fern grows according to a fractal pattern, in which each scale of its structure resembles the overall shape of the leaf.

Pascal's triangle is a fractal pattern, which repeats itself over several different size scales. Journalistic writing is very much arranged in a similar structure.

A fractal pattern is one that repeats itself over many different size-scales. In fractal geometry, the large, overall pattern of something is repeated at even smaller scales. Fractal patterns are found everywhere in nature. The broad leaf of a fern, for example, is made from branches containing smaller leaflets. These branches are merely smaller versions of the entire leaf, and each of the smallest leaflets are imitations of the same overall shape. The way trees branch-out or broccoli grows, or even the structure of our own brains and internal organs, are all due to fractal patterns. It is no wonder that the most-understandable forms of writing are also constructed using a fractal structure. It is exactly this structure which was described in the "foreshadowing" section of this essay. The overall pattern begins in the lede, is expanded upon in the introduction, and further expanded upon in the sections. The pattern is even repeated all the way down to the structure of the individual paragraphs.

However, some sections in an article may become very large, and may need to be divided into subsections. When this happens, it is usually best to use the same fractal-structure and organizing-format found in the entire article. The section should start with a lede paragraph or two, giving the overall meaning of the section, and then go immediately into an intro-subsection, describing each different aspect. Then the following subsections expand on each of those aspects. The section becomes like a mini-article of its own. As an example, when you read the next section, notice how the structure used is identical to overall structure of the entire essay, as described in the foreshadowing section. When building an article, try to think of it as being laid-out in a pyramid structure; narrow and extremely pointed at the top, but spreading out wider and wider toward the bottom. However, unlike an Egyptian pyramid, your writing pyramid is made up of smaller pyramids (sections), which are made from even smaller pyramids (subsections), which are made from yet smaller pyramids (paragraphs).

On the opposite side of the scale; the large side; are the "family articles." Here, again, we find the same fractal-format. When a subject becomes so large and complex that it cannot possibly be covered reasonably in one article, then it is appropriate to construct a "parent article," which broadly details the entire subject. This parent article serves the same purpose as the introduction section of any article; only on a larger scale. It broadly defines the entire subject, then breaks it into its different aspects. Then each of those aspects are summarized in sections of their own, with "main-article links" to the "subordinate articles." The sub-articles themselves may also become parent articles of their own. For example, Energy is the parent article of kinetic energy and potential energy. Potential energy, in turn, is the parent article for gravitational potential-energy, chemical potential-energy, etc... However large or small, the pattern always repeats itself.

A different point of view

I've now discussed structure, organization, and presentation from the reader's point of view. Now it's time to give you a brief notion of different points of view: Those of the seekers and researchers, consisting of newcomers, teachers, and experts. When writing, it's easy to think of yourself as speaking to only one individual, and, most of the time, you are. However, when writing something like an encyclopedia, you will actually be speaking to many different readers; some will be professors and some will be school children. Some will be mechanics and others will be doctors. This gives you multiple things to consider as well, such as: How understandable is the writing to a particular age group, or how accurate will an expert find it? Is it easy for just about anyone to navigate through it to find what they need?

Who reads these articles anyway?

An interesting feature of Wikipedia are the page view statistics. It's a good feeling to look at an article you've written and see that 10,000 people have read it today. However, what are the stats really saying?

It has long been known by publishers that a good portion of people who view an article do not actually read it. In fact, (not meaning to burst anyone's bubble here), you can make a good bet that, on average, 90% of the people who viewed your article did not actually read the whole thing. Several readers came back multiple times. A small percentage only came to look at the pictures, while a larger percent seek only to find out what the subject is. An even larger percentage, however, came to research information about some specific question which they want answered.

These readers, seekers, and researchers consist of a huge variety of people, ranging from scholars to nitwits; from professionals to students; from the elderly to children... It is important to realize that most of these people will not be familiar with the subject, the lingo, or any of the background information that goes along with it. They will be starting-off fresh, and will be very put-off if the answers are not easy to find and understand. Some may be quite familiar with the subject, but will be looking for more information about it. Others may only have slight background knowledge of the subject and will be easily lost. Some people will have exceptional knowledge of the subject, and these are the ones who will be most likely to critique your work. While you will really be writing for an entire continuum of the population, you can generally think of them as consisting mostly of newcomers, with a dash of teachers and a sprinkling of experts.

Seekers and researchers

"...Can [you] provide an opening paragraph which speaks to the layman in simpler language, presenting the general concept for a quick grasp by those who encounter the word in other articles and wonder "what is this?"." --Cosmo1976

Seekers are only looking to answer the question "what." They will probably only read the lede and, perhaps, the introduction, and will usually get very annoyed if they can't get a direct answer. In fact, it is a common misconception among political articles that the "best" place to hide some sort of POV is in the lede, getting it "up in your face," but actually it's the worst place because it sticks out like a sore thumb; something like a kid yelling, "Look at me! Mom! Look at me!" while the adults are having a conversation. People looking to find out what a subject is are expecting to find out very quickly. If not, the seeker will simply get bored and leave.

For those researching a specific answer, they will usually skim through the article until something catches their eye. Usually, these people are on a mission to find something very specific, and are not really interested in a scavenger hunt. They are usually only going to read a few sentences of the lede or the introduction, to help orient themselves. (This tends to be more accurate than using the table-of-contents, although many researches will do that as well.) When skimming through sections, people will normally scan the introduction paragraph, and may only read a few words from each paragraph until something related to their search comes into view. Only then will the researcher actually begin to read some of the text. Quite often, the answer will not be found directly, but will lead them to clues, causing them to refine their question or to follow links to related articles, which may lead to further answers or clues. (Another thing I learned on political articles is that people often resist putting information in the sub-articles, when in fact that can actually make it easier to find, because a majority of people are not readers, but seekers and researchers.)

Using the previously described structure and organizing format aids the researcher in finding the information which they are looking for, not only because this keeps it coherent, but also because it keeps things adhered to an easily detectable format, making things easier to find.

Newcomers

One of the most daunting tasks in writing is explaining complex things to people who have no former background information about the subject. Some of these people will be highly knowledgeable about other subjects, so you will want to avoid "talking-down" to them. However, some will be school children, so care needs to be taken to begin an article at a very simple level, but also without talking-down to them. (Children hate that just as much as adults.)

The trick is to be able to explain things in simple terminology. The lede should briefly state what the subject is, leaving out all the frills. Every seeker and reader will read the lede. When they do so, they will be expecting it to answer the question "what" very quickly. The challenge lies not in "dumbing it down," for that would be contrary to defining the subject. The challenge is to answer the question as concisely and precisely as possible, using easily understandable terminology. This means leaving out as much jargon as possible. In fact, 99% of the time the lede should never need wikilinks, because it should be fully understandable without them. The key to this trick is to be able to define the entire subject in the very first sentence, condensing it all into one simple and, preferably, short equation. Then, briefly expand that one sentence into a paragraph or two, but rarely more than three. The first sentence is critical, and should usually begin: "[Subject] is..." The main goal is to keep it concise and precise, remembering that the lede is mainly for the children and newcomers, and others seeking only to find out what the subject is.

Some of the more inquisitive seekers may move on to the introduction section. These people, along with the readers, will generally be people ranging from middle-school students to long-time professors. They may not be well-versed in the particular subject, but, more often than not, they will be well-read on one or a variety of other subjects. For the most part, you can usually treat the intro-section as if you're only speaking to high-school students. This is the perfect place to begin describing some very basic jargon and adding wikilinks. The intro will expand upon the lede, quickly breaking the subject into its different aspects and then briefly describing each of those aspects; (aspects which will later be discussed in the body of the article). The key, again, is to define things as quickly as possible. Begin the intro with an introduction sentence, which defines the entire section. Expand that into an introduction paragraph, where each sentence describes the following paragraphs. Then, begin each following paragraph with an introduction sentence, which concisely defines the paragraph. Formulate your equations using the simplest terminology possible, without sacrificing precision.

Those who move on to the body of the text will be the very dedicated readers (those who want in-depth information) and the experts and teachers. The body of the article is usually where very technical and college level explanations are made. In these sections, you can usually write as if you're speaking to college students. However, the language should not be so overly complex that the curious lay-person will not be able to follow along. Math formulas should be carefully explained in English. Jargon should always be explained in mid-sentence. The writing should make sense to people who are learned, just not so learned about a particular area. Readers should be able to follow it and infer the meanings from context, being able to finish the entire article before ever needing to click on a wikilink.

Experts and teachers

When writing an encyclopedia article, you also have the daunting task of helping the teachers and experts. The information needs to be useful and accurate, because you can bet your ass that someone will either try to use it or will know much more about it than you.

Teachers should not be confused with experts. A person can definitely be both, and quite often they are. For the most part, however, they can be treated as two separate types of individuals with different backgrounds and goals. The old saying goes, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." While this may seem quite jaded, the saying illustrates a point: Teachers often know only what they've read while experts know by doing. Teachers often look at the world in terms of clear-cut certainties and easily outlined recipes, whereas experts live at the boundary where certainty and uncertainty meet. Experts generally understand that a recipe is merely a guide but never ensures an outcome. Writing for these groups of individuals presents the writer with an obligation to strive for accuracy.

Teachers may or may not be well-read on the subject, but will usually have some background information about it. They are most often looking for an answer which they can provide to their students or, perhaps, some in-depth analysis. They may or may not take the information provided at face value, but often will investigate further. Teachers often do not follow the latest advances or most recent studies, so can possibly become outdated in their information. Therefore, they can sometimes become quite adamant that the information, as they've learned it, is forever the gospel truth. For these reasons, it is very important that the information provided is accurate and free of inconsistencies.

Experts are a different sort, because they will usually be both well-read on a subject and will also have some direct experience with the subject. These people are in the best position to test the sources. They're the ones who can point out errors and inconsistencies in the first place. This doesn't mean that they're all-knowing, but that they're usually in a better position to know than most. These are the people whose hands-on experience will allow them to determine just how useful the information is, and they will be expecting it to be very accurate. These people will spot inaccuracies and inconsistencies a mile away, and when they judge your writing, they will be judging you. Pleasing them, above all, is the final test of any writing.

For the most part, the challenges of writing for both teachers and experts are the same. Both are usually very learned people with a good measure of background information. Both are looking for a high degree of accuracy and usefulness. However, both can fall into the trap of repetition. This can cause a lack of neutral judgment, because they can often become "stuck in their own ruts," valuing a particular set of ideas or theories and failing to rationally consider alternative possibilities. When writing for these people, extreme care should be taken to separate fact from opinion, for these are the people who will see clearly any attempt to blend the two.

Sourcing

"The task of the fighter pilot is to obtain as much tactical information as possible from every available source and then filter and analyze this information based on knowledge of its source and his best estimates of its timeliness, accuracy, and reliability. Some of the information received may be conflicting, and pilot judgment is required to separate the wheat from the chaff....

"Overreliance on any one source of tactical information is a common problem and often leads to disaster. This condition can be the result of actual lack of available informational sources, loss of some sources (through jamming, for example), or simply ignoring available inputs. The disregard of some available information can be fostered by a tactical doctrine that relies heavily on one source to the exclusion of others, or it may be caused by sensory overload from too much information being fed to the pilot at critical moments." --Robert Shaw (Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering)

The internet is a wonderful invention, because it brings so much information right to our fingertips. However, the name "information super-highway" (like the information it contains) is a bit of a misnomer. It would have been more accurate to call it the "misinformation super-highway." The internet is full of perfectly good information but, like Wikipedia, a person has to be very discerning about the things they believe. Most of the good is jumbled in with the bad, the deceptive, the confused, the ill-advised, the partial truth, etc... The internet is no place to be gullible.

An interesting side-effect of technology is that it seems to make us --not only the individual but humanity as a whole-- lazier. It's hard to tell whether this is evolution or devolution. A hundred years ago there was no internet, but people had no problem shoeing a horse, forging a new part for their automobile, or building their own radio out of some wire and an oatmeal container. As our access to information increases, people's tendency to dig deeper seems to decrease. Nowadays, people have a far greater tendency to simply read something and then start citing it immediately, without really checking to see if the information is actually good or complete. This tendency to simply "cite at first sight" is a real problem for an encyclopedia.

Fortunately, for any notable subject, there are usually a multitude of sources that a person can find if you simply decide to look past the first entry that pops-up on google. Sometimes things may be buried deep but, by comparing different sources to each other, a clearer understanding of the subject can be extrapolated. Nearly every source will contain mistakes. This is true with some more-so than others, but to really understand a subject a writer needs to examine it from all perspectives. The writer should look at them without any preconceived notions about what they hope to find, because that can unwittingly lead down the dark and dangerous road to synthesis. "And once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

Of course, some sources are definitely more reliable than others. Books are almost always better than websites, but college-produced books are often better than self-published books. The reliability of the information in a source depends on the nature of the source itself. A book on knitting may be wonderful for articles on needle-point, but would be a poor source for an article on atomic physics (even if the author chose to talk about it). Some good sources simply misquote information, or unknowingly repeat something they misunderstood. With any source, a writer must be very diligent in their assessment of not only the source itself, but of the particular information it is providing. For this reason it is very important to look at various sources and compare them to each other. The best sources will have a list of references that the writer both can and should look up.

Primary sources can be wonderful, because these are generally the most accurate. However, they are usually highly-technical, and, unless the author already knows a lot about the subject, they can be difficult for the layman to interpret correctly. I use primary sources all the time, but I generally include some secondary sources as well because these are easier for the reader to interpret themselves. Plus it provides some background knowledge so they can go read the primary source too. If there are no secondary sources about a subject, chances are great that it is not notable enough to include in an encyclopedia.

The important thing when sourcing an article is not to be too hasty in citing the first thing you see on the subject. Wikipedia is not a newspaper, and we have plenty of time to look things over and get them right.

Beware: things to avoid

Incompleteness

"I'm sorry for the length of this letter, but I did not have the time to write a short one." --Blaise Pascal

Have you ever had a thought in the back of your mind, but had trouble putting it to words? Have you ever found that the words you chose didn't come close to conveying what you really meant? This is a bigger problem than most people think. Information exchange is a loop. You compose it, then you send it. But that's not the end, is it? Did anyone receive it? Did they understand it in the way you intended?

No way to know until they give you feedback. Do they roll their eyes while you're talking, indicating that they're thinking of something else rather than listening. Did they get upset at what you thought would be taken as a compliment? Did they give a cogent answer to a question you posed? These are all types of feedback that lets you know how well they understood what you meant. Without it, the exchange of information is really incomplete.

When writing an encyclopedia, nearly all of this feedback is absent. Wikipedia has the benefit of talk pages, where you can get some feedback, but the vast majority of readers don't use them. In such a case, it is mainly up to the writer to be sure they'll be understood correctly, and this requires putting yourself in the reader's shoes. How would I understand this if I wasn't a physicist? Or a mathematician? A follower of politics? Or a fan of Star Trek? For example, I have a very intuitive understanding of mechanics but am by no means a mathematician, so to understand physics I need it delivered in very mechanical terms, which is entirely possible but rare on Wikipedia. Most physics articles are written for physicists.

While an encyclopedia should be concise, there is a fine line between being concise and too concise. When something is too concise, it comes off to the reader as incomplete. Something is missing. Gaps need to be filled. The reader doesn't know what those gaps are, so they either go away without understanding, or worse, with a complete misunderstanding. You see this on social media and even Wikipedia talk-pages all the time, where people make statements that are too concise and end up talking right past each other, neither even realizing that they're misunderstanding the other. The shorter the statement, the more it begins to resemble poetry in that it can be understood differently by each person who reads it. Yet even long, rambling walls-of-text can be full of more gaps and holes than a screen door. It's important to get out of your own self when writing and try to see things from the reader's perspective. It's an intricate balancing act between being concise and complete.

Cobbling: props and crutches

Zinsser's Law: "Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading."

Too often Wikipedia articles begin to look like an old, run-down shanty in the bad part of a third-world country, propped up with two-by-fours and pieces of driftwood, or whatever happened to wash ashore. Never is this truer than in technical and scientific articles. The internet has made this far too easy, providing us with a slew of props and crutches that never existed before, allowing writers to gloss-over entire definitions and meanings with technical terms and jargon. By simply linking to articles about the jargon, the writer is provided with a crutch they can use to prop-up the meaning.

Unfortunately, instead of giving the reader an actual meaning which they can readily absorb and use as context for further information, the reader is actually given no meaning at all, until they follow the links and read all the other articles that (hopefully) define the jargon. It becomes like a huge scavenger hunt just to get a simple answer to a question. To the reader, seeker, and researcher, this becomes a nightmare of bouncing around between articles until they just get frustrated and give up. These wikilinks should be added to give the reader a direct route to important, related information, but the article should not rely on them to define its own subject. The reader should be able to read and understand the entire article, and then maybe go back and click on links they want to investigate further.

Another crutch is the use of diagrams and photos to explain the article. Like wikilinks, this simply gives the appearance of laziness and shoddy construction. It makes a person wonder: How did writers ever get by without these things?

Any good writing is completely coherent, flows nicely, and can completely stand on its own without any help from crutches and props. This definitely makes writing more difficult, but it is never simple. In fact, the easier it is for the reader to understand it; the more difficult it was for the writer to write. It is far too easy to look for a crutch in order to get out of a little hard work, but anyone who sees it will not be viewing the majestic castle you had in mind, but they'll see it for the cobbled-together heap of junk that it actually is. The thing to remember is that a castle is sturdy, structurally sound, and able to stand on its own, without anything to prop it up. An encyclopedia article is no different.

Piracy and projection

When writing from sources, there is a common tendency to simply copy the information as it is written, commandeering it as your own. Even more common is a tendency to read individual sentences or paragraphs as whole statements, without paying attention to the context of the statements and the overall meaning of the writing as whole, leading a writer to project their own ideas into the work. These tendencies are referred to as plagiarism and synthesis.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the biggest taboo in writing. In essence, it is stealing someone else' work. Although some people don't know, or simply don't care, about plagiarism, directly copying someone else' work is a copyright violation, which could lead to actual legal problems. At the very least, it is considered to be in extremely bad taste. The same way comedians don't steal each other's jokes and respectable people don't steal each other's property, respectable writers do not copy each other's writing.

However, most people don't set out to plagiarize when writing. Even the best writers can fall victim to it when sourcing information. Often, there is an attempt to paraphrase the source, but, for the sake of accuracy, not to paraphrase too loosely, in order to keep the writing very close to what the source says. The thing to understand is that there are literally an infinite number of ways to say exactly the same thing. Paraphrasing is a way many people usually get around plagiarism, but paraphrasing can become awfully close to copying, and can still cause trouble.

The trick is to read the information, understand its overall meaning, and then write the information in your own words. Often, writers will read all of the sources beforehand, to put everything into context. Then they may wait a little while as the meaning is established in their minds, while the actual words used by the sources are all but forgotten. Once this has been achieved, then the writer has no choice but to use their own words and their own understanding to write the article. Upon finishing, the writer can go back and double-check that the meaning matches the meaning given by the sources (which is a great time to start adding references), plus you can use the time to make sure nothing is accidentally paraphrased too closely.

Synthesis

Synthesis is a hard monster to avoid. The tendency to synthesize information which we never actually received is a natural human reaction, which helps us fill in the voids, gaps, or unknowns in our surrounding world. It is simply the way the human mind copes with these gaps in our knowledge, and possibly is a prime factor that sets us apart from other animals. Without the ability to synthesize, we would have no imagination whatsoever.

Obviously, this becomes a problem when writing non-fiction, because using your imagination is inherently a property of fiction. Therefore, synthesis has no place in the realm of non-fiction. However, our minds are wired to fill in these gaps in our knowledge whether we know it or not. It happens to us all the time without our really noticing. Not only that, our minds fill in these gaps with imagination based on our idealized view of the world. For example, most people have experienced driving or walking down a road, and seeing a beautiful person walking up ahead. However, the closer you get, the less beautiful that person appears. From far away, there were many gaps in your knowledge, which were filled in by your imagination, making any person look gorgeous from a distance.

This same thing occurs when sourcing an article. You may have an idea in your mind about what should be written in an article, so the natural response is to go looking for statements that support your expectations. It may be easy to find them, but far too easy is to simply read the supporting sentence or paragraph, and take it completely out of context from what the source is actually saying. By not reading the statement in its entirety of context, the writer leaves these gaps in their knowledge, which can unwittingly lead them to fill those gaps with their imagination. Unless you're a crook, preacher or politician, most writers of non-fiction do not intend synthesis, but it is a difficult thing to avoid sometimes, because the subconscious is hard-wired to cover any holes and make our knowledge seem complete, when it really is not.

The trick to avoid synthesis is similar to avoiding plagiarism. Read and gain a full understanding of the source, and the entirety of the meaning it is trying to convey. Compare that with other sources, so that you have a clear understanding of the subject, and then write out your understanding in your own words. Just as the meaning of an individual word is only part of the meaning of a sentence, a single sentence is rather meaningless until it is put into the context of the entire article.

Colloquialisms

Colloquialism is more or less a formal term for slang, or words, phrases, and grammar common in everyday speech but not usually found in formal writing. In example: "These young'uns nowadays ain't got no idea what real work is." That's about as informal as you can get, short of throwing in a few cuss words. To convey the information in a formal tone, you need to change all of the colloquialisms into an acceptable style, such those outlined in Reuter's or the Chicago Manual of Style. This changes the above example to read: "According to Jon, young people in the modern age do not understand what it really means to work."

Colloquialisms are fine for talk pages and personal correspondence, but should be avoided in any professional writing.

Talkpage discussions...

"I'm sorry for the length of this letter, but I did not have the time to write a short one." --Blaise Pascal

So, I'm going to veer off topic and more into the realm of talkpages for a moment, although some of these points are universal, but particularly useful to keep in mind in discussions. Discussions are either about giving advice, or they are about debate.

Debating is not much different from writing an article or even telling a story. There is a starting point and a middle that progresses to an ending point. The starting point, called the premise, is followed by a reasoning that leads to the end point, or the conclusion. When this end point is reached, it's time to stop, because the end point is by far the most important thing. The last thing people see is the thing they'll remember.

The biggest mistake people make is to focus on words, phrases, or sentences taken out of context, and in all their nitpicking completely miss the point!

As a common example, there is a huge fallacy people believe, that the first line or paragraph of the lede is the most important, when in fact the part people will remember most is the ending. The same is often true for people in debates. They too often focus on words or phrases, or individual sentences, taken out of context, and completely miss the point. Sometimes it's a defense mechanism, or sometimes it's offense, or more often simply a lack of situational or self-awareness. Either way, it's a weakness that can be used to your advantage.

In discussions, it's not necessary to cherrypick lines and repeat them back to people. We're all aware of what we said, and it comes off as condescending and dismissive. The only thing it is necessary to respond to is the point, and anything that distracts from that is a poor tactical decision on your part. Make your points as concise yet as precise as possible. Even though we expect a discussion to be less thought-out than an article, it still helps to get quickly to the point, just to avoid losing people, and this is where too much can be overloading to the senses. The words only exist so we can put them together and make a point.

Editing your work

"I may be the world's worst writer, but I'm the world's best rewriter" --James Michener.

After all of that, it's time to let you in on a little secret writers don't want you to know. (Shhh. Don't tell anybody.) Everything above only covers about a fifth of what it takes to be a good writer. The real talent is in the tearing apart, gutting, rearranging, and rebuilding that comes once your writing is through. Now it's time for the real work. As horrible as that sounds, this is where the real talent comes in handy. Somebody's got to do it, so it might as well be you.

Editors and writers: a love/hate relationship

Cuts! What do you mean we need to make cuts!

Wikipedia is made up of two different kinds of individuals; editors and writers. Personally, I am a writer. In Wiki-language, these people are usually called "inclusionists," except there is one major difference: A writer includes indiscriminately, but is aware of the value of a good editor. In Wiki-ese, a good editor refers to those people called "deletionists," with one major difference: An editor deletes discriminately, and only that which obstructs readability, understandability, or that which is unnecessary, or which simply cannot be verified.

A writer will often get upset when they find their work has been edited. An editor will often get just as upset to find their advice has been ignored. This is nothing new, for it is a problem that has existed since the invention of the printing press, if not since the invention of writing itself.

Building stones out of sand

Whether fictional or non-fictional, a writer is a compiler of information. A writer is the director, producer, and photographer, using the written word as their medium. Through the magic of prose the writer brings us the greatest of detail, marbled with wonderful passages designed to lead the reader on the most amazing tour of the subject ever to be seen. The writer is often painstaking in their research, with constant thought of foreshadowing. Writers are the most important people that Wikipedia has, for they bring us what is needed to construct a good article.

A writer does not necessarily need to be artistic. A thorough understanding of the language and a clear, focused thought pattern are usually enough. In fact, the less artistic a writer is in creating their prose, the more enjoyable the reading will usually be. Writers are rarely concerned with this, however, and should not be, for they are always focused on painting large pictures out of small letters.

Carving statues out of stone

Editors can be divided into two distinct categories, copy editors and content editors. A copy editor is a basic mechanic. They fix spelling and correct grammar. They might reorganize an article for clarity, but almost never alter content. As a result, these editors have very little difficulty when encountering a writer.

A content editor must be artistic. A content editor's main concern is the reader. They ask themselves, "How would this read if spoken aloud?", or "Does this tangent really add to the story?" A content editor is concerned with pacing, timing, structure, delivery, and, most of all, relevance. A writer will often cringe at the sight of a content editor's work, feeling that their wonderful prose has been hacked to pieces. It is important for writers to realize that the hacking, chopping, and cutting away of the unnecessary helps bring the full beauty of their work to life. It is also important for an editor to know just how much to cut, and how to do it in just the right place. The editor is the real artist, so keep in mind the advice given by Michelangelo, "Carving is easy, I just go down to the skin and stop."

The following quote from here describes the writer/editor relationship as it works the most effectively.

The important part of killing your darlings is that you should only kill them when they need to die, and more often than not that decision is based more on coherency than on pacing. A darling, at least as we’ve defined it, is something you really like that works well on its own, but doesn’t fit into the whole, be that whole a scene or an entire book. Trimming a scene for pacing is usually done by taking out stuff that doesn’t necessarily work at all, or moving stuff to a different scene where it works better.

So the real, cop-out answer to this particular aspect of your question is that you [the writers] should cram every scene full of everything that should be in it, and [that you, the editors, should] viciously cut out everything that shouldn’t. Which is more or less the same questionably-useful advice that Michelangelo gave on sculpting: “If you want to carve an elephant, take a block of stone and chip away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant.” - Dan Wells

Writers, be your own worst editor, and everything will work out fine.

Editorial judgment: consciousness and conscience

Why are we conscious? This is the biggest, most mysterious unanswered question in modern science. Why can't a computer program be created that can write an encyclopedia: Collect the data; understand the meaning; and then condense it into a readable article, all in its own words? Why can't a computer become conscious, and what do we need consciousness for anyhow?

One of the most compelling answers is that consciousness may be rooted at the quantum level, and it might require a very special type of computer; a quantum computer. Quantum computers use the electronic states of atoms as processors, and can operate with incredible speed and storage capacity, all in an extremely small space. Consciousness may have developed as a means for life to cope with quantum uncertainty, to allow life to intuit answers to unsolvable problems. Some speculate that lower forms of consciousness developed as far back as the first single-celled organisms, to allow their "brains" (cytoskeletons) to sense and deal with uncertainties in their outside worlds. In fact, the theories of evolution experts, Adrian Lister and Lynn Rothschild, seem to suggest a direct link between a cell's awareness of environmental changes and its ability to alter its DNA expression, "creating an organism specific for that environment." Consciousness is mainly our awareness of ourselves, awareness of the consciousness of others, and of the uncertainties in the surrounding environment. The most likely reason we are conscious is to use our judgment and intuition to solve problems which a group of set rules and laws, no matter how complex, cannot solve alone. A simple example of this are those annoying "captcha" letters that websites use to make sure you're human. Computers programs alone cannot decipher these goofy-shaped letters, but humans can easily see the larger picture and use judgment to infer the answer.

The strictest adherence to rules is not always the best choice. The rules of the road may say that you have the right-of-way, but if a child runs out in front of your car you would stop, wouldn't you? Consciousness makes us aware of our needs and the needs of others, and allows us to make judgments about how to fulfill those needs. This gives rise to our conscience, and allows us to evaluate the rules themselves.

Everything written on Wikipedia should be evaluated as to how it applies to the rules on a case-by-case basis. Very few things in the world can honestly be judged as being simply "black or white;" good or bad; guilty or innocent. For any rules to work effectively, they need to be firm but flexible, or, more importantly, the people who both administer and follow the rules need to be flexible. Rules can never encompass every possibility --nor should they-- because quite often there is a bigger picture that people, when too focused on micromanaging, can easily overlook. I'm not saying that rules should be broken or ignored, but quite the opposite. The rules should always be evaluated and judged themselves against each and every case, and be able to flex to fit the bigger picture as well. The purpose of Wikipedia is to provide readers with useful information, which is well organized, provides a concise overview, and is accurate. To do this we cannot rely on sources alone, blindly repeating what they say. Instead, we have a duty to our readers to evaluate the sources against each other, to weed out the fluff, to protect the innocent, to correct inaccuracies, and to reconcile inconsistencies. The editorial judgment of Wikipedians is crucial to meeting this goal.

The purpose of rules is to outline the bigger picture in terms of what is usually acceptable or not acceptable. Rules are not meant to turn us into mindless robots. Although the rules are important, they serve as more of a guide for the editor to use their judgment wisely, but should never be followed simply for the rule's sake, for doing so is like driving blind.

Cutting: writing between the lines

"When you write, fill your work with every sort of detail you can imagine, the sky ... its color, the shape of the clouds, the furnishings in the room, and the railing on the stairs. Then put it away for a week ... a month ... a year. When you're ready, come back and read through it all --the boring minutia-- and cut, edit, and strip everything that is not absolutely essential to the story. Then read through it again, and you will find that it is all still there. That's what makes a good writer." --Mr. Wright

Writers are in love with the details, and this is true for all writers. We can spend hours crafting beautiful scenery, describing every little thing in terms of all five senses. Facial expressions, the weather, the inner workings of machinery, every single detail is within our purview. Writers have a tendency to go overboard on these, to the point of boring the reader to tears, but it is a necessary tool which allows you to carefully construct a scene in which everything fits, and everything works according to your design. When it comes time to edit the piece, most of these details can be cut, but the essence of them will remain, because they fit flawlessly into your design.

Imagine writing a story about a murder. You can start by describing the storm outside, and how dark and foreboding the clouds are, with the wind gusting through the bare tree branches, pounding the window with raindrops. Describe every piece of furniture in the room, the colors of the walls, and even the texture of the ceiling. All of this is wonderful, because it draws them into your imagination, so you can literally visualize the scene. What's more, with such a keen picture of the details, you can eliminate any inconsistencies between the scenes.

However, going through all of these details is extremely boring to the reader. After writing them it's time to choose which ones to keep and which ones to cut, and a good editor will be fairly ruthless in these choices. For the most part, other than some basic description, everything that is not crucial to the story is edited out. The remarkable thing that happens, though, is that it all remains, hidden between the lines. This is how authors like Stephen King are able to create such vivid images using so few words. The reader can easily visualize all of those furnishings in the room or the wall color without needing to be told, because it was all there, fitted so completely well into the design. If the story is made into a movie, the writer can see all of these details emerge, even though the director never actually read them.

When it comes to fiction writing, in particular, the entire first half of the story can usually be cut, starting it right in the middle. This tradition actually arose during the great plays of ancient Greece, where it became apparent that the histories and background stories were unnecessary, because the audience wanted to go right into the action. It is through the action alone that the background emerges. This was demonstrated amazingly well in the 1970s with the release of Star Wars. Demonstrated just as well was the folly of delving into the backstory with the release of The Phantom Menace in the 1990s, (not to mention the use of dialog to explain the story).

This phenomenon also occurs in non-fiction writing. It is very tempting to include every minute detail about a subject, no matter how trivial, in an attempt to increase the reader's understanding, and such an attempt is usually encouraged. However, upon editing, these details need to be carefully examined to determine which ones are truly necessary for the reader's understanding, and which ones are just fluff, serving only to inflate the article and annoy the reader. All of the fluff can usually be cut and the article will still retain their essence.

However, this phenomenon can also work to the advantage of those wanting to push a certain point of view, because a POV can easily be implied without actually saying it, and an implication can be even more effective than a statement. For this reason, a good editor must always be on the lookout for nefarious things being hidden between the lines, and this is especially true when you edit your own writing.

Criticism

I cannot stress this enough: Do not become a writer if you cannot handle criticism. Writers thrive on criticism. We learn from it. We decide how to make our writing, our work and ourselves better through it. As great as it is to hear how good our work may be, that teaches us nothing, and often comes off like a little white lie. To be a good writer, you need to invite criticism ... heck, even encourage it. People often feel uncomfortable telling a person what is wrong with their work, so when you find that rare person who will tell you like it is, you have found your best friend. You should, by all means, encourage this honesty and trust by acknowledging them and their concerns, and take absolutely no offense to it. Remember, if you can't handle criticism, become a chef. Writing is not for you.

In Wikipedia, this is even more pronounced. Nobody will have a single compunction about criticizing you here. This is truly one of the benefits of anonymity. Many people here will give you good advice, which may sometimes come off as rude, insulting, or even indignant. Keep in mind that no one here will stroke your ego, but there will be plenty of criticism to go around, and a good writer will be delighted, adding it to their bank of fortitude. Don't discount a valid point simply because you don't like the person making it. Remember: "A good idea cannot be held responsible for the people who believe in it."

Diagnosing: refresh, recite, and review

One of the biggest problems for any writer is actually spotting the problems in the first place. This usually requires three things to be done before you can begin to recognize the difficulties that readers may have. The first is to take a recess from the work. Once you've refreshed your mind, reciting the work is a great tool that can reveal many unexpected problems. The third is to have someone review the work.

The biggest problem that writing presents to a writer is that it causes you to memorize what you have written. Upon re-reading, you're not really reading so much as you're remembering. In this way, things like typos slip right by with ease. Even harder to spot are those moments of incoherency. Because we form our thoughts before we ever put words to them, writers always understand what they intend to say, and the chosen words always appear to convey exactly what we mean. Even worse is that this problem is self-reinforcing, like a "catch-22." The more you read it; the better it appears. However, if you take some time away, go do other things, do a job or a hobby, and divorce yourself from the work, you can come back and read the work as an actual reader, and not simply remember it as your eyes scan through.

The subconscious plays tricks like that on the mind sometimes, and it often continues to work on problems even after we've consciously moved on to other things. In the short term this is helpful, as many of the solutions to our problems come from this method of thinking. Doing something else for a while or sleeping-on-it helps this process out greatly. However, there comes a point where the writer must completely divorce themselves from the work and take a long while off. This allows the subconscious to forget about it, moving it into the "unconscious." I use the word "divorce" because, like the real thing, it's a difficult and messy process, and, similarly, it allows you to come back when you're ready, look at it as if it were new, and read it as if you're seeing it for the first time. That's when the real problems show up, and you find yourself asking, "Why didn't I see that before?"

Another technique is to recite the material out loud. What sounds good in your mind may be awful and awkward to speak aloud. Because the goal of writing is to convey information in a clear, natural, spoken-sounding voice, there is no better way to check for this that to try speaking it. In doing so, you'll be amazed at what difficulties you find.

The third technique is the real test of any writing; to have someone else read it. If they can give you feedback, this can really open your eyes to how exactly others comprehend what you write and how you can correct those errors, both immediately and in future writings.

Sleep

In particular, sleep is very important to any cognitive function, and this includes both reading and writing. One of the first signs of sleep deprivation is the loss of coherent thought, and this can be detrimental to all cognitive functions. To write, research, or (in any other fashion) perform properly, a person needs adequate sleep. Not only that, by sleeping on a problem, a solution will often present itself in the morning, and that includes a better way to write something. So why do we need sleep?

Imagine that your brain is like a computer. Now imagine that your computer is constantly uploading information; not a few things; not hundreds of things, but thousands of separate uploads coming in all at once, all day long. At the same time, your "computer" has not thousands, but millions of internal-programs running simultaneously. Now, imagine just how quickly your computer, no matter how advanced, will become all fragmented. Its processing will soon begin to slow and programs will freeze-up more often. The next thing you know, your brain is beginning to operate like a Microsoft program. More than anything, sleep is like defragmenting your brain. Your dreams, as far as researchers can tell, is your unconscious mind trying to reorganize into a usable format all of the non-linear information your brain gathers. While the conscious mind sleeps, the unconscious mind works to clean it up. During this time, sleep frees your subconscious to work solely on problems which it was too distracted to fully concentrate on during the day. Therefore, don't discount the effect that a well-rested mind can have on your writing and editing.

Letting go

Finally! You have it done. Everything is in great shape, you're happy with the organization, and the whole thing seems to flow right off of the tongue. The time has come to send your baby off on its own; out into the great, big world. Now it's time to turn it over to the publisher and their staff of editors, or (as we writers like to call them) the wolves.

I know you didn't want that scene cut. Of course you preferred the wording as you originally had it. There, there. You'll be ok. Trust me, it is often for the best. Your baby is growing up, and it's time to let it go. It may meet a creative genius, who brings your vision to life on the silver-screen. It could also run off with some Hollywood producer who will hollow out its very soul to showcase the latest advances in special effects. Who knows. What I do know is: It is no longer fully in your control and you will just have to accept it.

In Wikipedia, this effect is more immediate than in other forms of media. Therefore, before you hit that save button, be prepared to turn it over to the pack. You can tag along and help guide it along the way, but don't be surprised if you get bit. Remember, it will never be completely yours again.

Further reading

Congratulations! If you've made it this far, you must be a very dedicated reader, which means you should make a good writer. Now that you may have some understanding of why all of these rules exist in writing, you may wish to move on to some more-advanced studies. A good place to start would be where the rules are kept, in the Wikipedia:Manual of style. Another excellent place to look would be at User:Tony1's subpages. Tony1 has thoughtfully assembled a collection of essays and exercises which are extremely helpful, and can be found below:

Self-help writing tutorials:

• Exercises in weeding out fluff from article text
• Advanced editing exercises
• Spot the ambiguity
• Build your linking skills
• Using hyphens and dashes
• Copy-editing essentials, part of the Military History Academy

edit

For more reading, see:

• On writing well: The classical guide to writing non-fiction by William Zinsser
• Stein on writing by Sol Stein
• Understanding journalism by Lynette Sheridan Burns
• Literary Journalism in the Twentieth Century by Norman Sims
• Reading and writing: Nonfiction genres by Kathleen Buss, Lee Karnowski
• Writing for journalists by Wynford Hicks, Sally Adams, Harriet Gilbert
• Philosophy of scientific method by John Stuart Mills

Common confusing words

Toward or towards

There is no real rule governing these similar prepositions. It's usually a case of writer preference. However, one obscure rule of thumb says that the preposition defines the spatial positioning of a noun performing a verb. If the noun and verb are singular, then the singular "toward" should be used:

Lucy runs toward the door.

If there is more than one noun, or the noun and verb are plural, "towards" should be used:

Lucy and John run towards the door.

Students run towards the door.

Effect and affect

Confusing, isn't it? These two similar words have identical meanings, yet cannot be used interchangeably. Don't worry, however, because it's not difficult. The only difference is that "effect" is a noun, whereas "affect" is a verb.

What is the effect of the radiation, and how will it affect us?

There are occasions, however, when affect can be a noun and effect a verb. These are rare, and the pronunciation is different. "Affect," as a noun (pronounced ă-ffect, as opposed to Əf-fect), refers to an emotional response, whereas "effect," as a verb (pronounced ē-ffect as opposed to ĕf-fect) refers the rendering of a consequence.

Your lack of affect at the crimes you committed have caused me to effect the maximum sentence."

Assure, ensure, insure?

Unlike effect and affect, these similar words have completely different meanings. "Assure" means: To alleviate someone's doubt. "Ensure" means: To make certain something either has or will occur. "Insure" means: To buy insurance. "You can assure the usher that the best way ensure he won't go to jail is to insure his car."

Minimum versus minimal

Both come from the Latin word "minim," meaning the smallest or least significant. In Latin, the suffixes -um, -us, and -a are neutral, male, and female. This works great for a language that is not order-specific. For instance, referring to Wen Smith's famous example, "canum morsum homus" (English: Dog-um bites man-us) means that a man bit the dog, even though it's not written in that order. -Us denotes the masculine (that which is doing) and -um denotes the neutral (that which is getting done), regardless of their order. However, English is very order-specific and, therefore, uses these suffixes a little differently. In English, "minimum" is a noun, or a noun being used as an adjective to modify another noun. Minimal is simply an adjective.

Minimum as a noun:

The gauge is at the minimum.

Minimum as an adjective, modifying a noun:

What is the gauge's minimum reading?"

Minimal as an adjective:

Hey, the pressure in the shop is minimal. What are you guys doing in here?

However, a common exception is that "minimal" is often used as an adjective modifying a noun, to denote being close to, but not exactly at the minimum:

We may be at minimal pressure, but I need zero pressure.

Lead or lede

Both of these words come from the Middle English word "lede." This was actually the plural or present-tense form of "led." The modern-day version is spelled "lead," and it has many different meanings. It can mean: the introductory section of a story or article. It can mean: to give someone or something direction or guidance. It can mean: a conduit, pipe, wire, or pathway. It can mean: a soft, toxic metal once used for piping. The different meanings may not always be evident from context. To help avoid this confusion, people in the writing profession usually refer the introductory section of an article using the old form of the word, "lede." "When working on the article about the metal, lead, referring to the lede leads me to believe that the lede in lead should be spelled l-e-d-e."

Pleaded vs. pled

Here's a can of worms, which has even experts puzzled. In the legal profession, people will argue vigorously that you should always use "pleaded" and never "pled." Within the context of a court of law, they are correct. However, very few lawyers can venture to tell you specifically why. Most explanations tend to boil down to: "Pleaded" is the valid, past-tense form of "plead" and "pled" is not. However, according to any dictionary, "pled" is indeed a valid word. So when do you use one and not the other?

Here's the source of the confusion: Both terms are not only verbs, but past-tense verbs. Both can also be past-tense "participles." A participle is simply a verb that is being used as an adjective, adverb, or noun. In the previous sentence, "is" is the verb and "being" is the participle (present-tense), being used as an adverb. It would be simple if only "pleaded" was one and "pled" was the other, but both are completely interchangeable in either case. So what you end up with are over-conceptualized arguments about which one is valid, when in fact they are both valid. They are synonyms.

Verbs are actions, and actions are strongly related to time. Therefore, verbs come in different "tenses," to differentiate between temporal perspectives. However, like any other word, verbs often have subtler connotations. In specific, these connotations are often a sense of neediness or urgency (or lack thereof). In example, if I say, "The boy pled to his mother to let him watch the end of the movie," the verb doesn't have nearly the sense of urgency as, "The boy pleaded to his mother..." So forget all the arguments about tense, participles and syntax, because both words are valid under those criteria. The difference has more to do with context and the meanings of individual letters (e.g.: long versus short-vowel sounds when combined with both plosive and fluid consonants), and is more related to the subconscious than anything else. (i.e.: If two children are shouting, and one is going, "Eeee!" but the other is yelling, "Ehhhh!", which one would the mother check on first?) Instead, think about the connotation which you want to imply. Sometimes a sense of urgency is needed and sometimes not, but the choice is yours. In a court room, you may want a sense of urgency, so "pleaded innocent" is probably the better term. When writing about it in a newspaper, the reporter may not necessarily feel a need for urgency, so "pled innocent" will work just fine.

That that

Have you ever seen a sentence with a double "that" which wouldn't read just the same with a single?

Nobody told me that that was a problem.

Nobody told me that was a problem.

For the most part, doubling-up words is simply a stumbling block for the reader, and can usually be easily rephrased to avoid such potholes in the text.

An before "H?"

Everybody's heard someone doing this. "We rode an helicopter to the jobsite." People must think it makes them sound more professional or worldly. However, what they're actually trying to sound like is Cockney, which is an English dialect. However, to really speak Cockney you have to drop the "H." "'Ello, gen’lemen, "ow've you been?" And when you drop the "H," well, it becomes a vowel, doesn't it? "'Ave you go’ an 'andkerchief?" As you can see, it doesn't work too well in writing. So, if you're going to write the "H," (or even worse, enunciate it), don't forget that it is a consonant.

In order

Some people really hate this phrase and will argue that it is completely useless. "In order" is an adjective, meaning: Within a particular sequence. "Stack the DVDs in order." However, very often it is also used as an adjective to describe a preposition, meaning that something must occur prior to achieving the position, and this is what puts some people off. The idea is that it is useless or somehow redundant to describe the pre-position of a preposition, and, in many cases, it is. Therefore, the sentence "You must go to the back of the line and wait in order to get a ticket." means the same thing as "You must go to the back of the line and wait to get a ticket."

However, sometimes the need for proper sequencing may not be evident from the preposition alone. In example, the sentence "The crankshaft is usually thoroughly heat-treated to a rather low hardness, making it tough to prevent breakage." has a dual meaning. It can mean that the crankshaft is tough, preventing it from breaking, or it can mean the low hardness makes the crankshaft prone to breaking. By simply adding an adjective to the preposition, the proper sequence of events becomes clear: "The crankshaft is usually thoroughly heat-treated to a rather low hardness, making it tough in order to prevent breakage." So, before adding "in order" to your list of fluff that can be cut upon first sight, it might be worth it to really look at the sentence to see why the author may have chosen it.

It's "its"

The difference between the words "it's" and "its" seems so simple. "It's" is simply a contraction of "it is," while "its" is the possessive form of the word "it." Although most possessive words have an apostrophe before the "s," the apostrophe was eliminated from "it" just to avoid confusion between the two. There should be very little reason to confuse the two, but people still do, and "it" even gets me time and again. So why does this happen?

In English, and especially American English, we speak using contractions all the time. Rarely ever does someone actually say "it is," and, when speaking, we rarely, consciously think about rules of possession and never think about apostrophes at all. Therefore, it is very easy for a person to slip-up when choosing between these words.

However, for encyclopedic writing, the usage becomes very easy and clear-cut. In an encyclopedia, the writing is very formal and never, ever uses contractions. Therefore, a person should never use the contraction "it's" when writing any article. It should always be "it is," which causes the writer to pay more attention to rules of verbs and possessives. The possessive form, "its," is the only one of these words that should be used, and only in possessive cases where "it is" just doesn't makes sense.

Times less

If you think about it carefully, you'll see this phrase is self-contradictory and meaningless. (Our product has five times less salt.) It has become a popular phrase due to advertising, but advertisers are masters at making meaningless phrases sound meaningful. Take the phrase, "Made with 100% real beef." Do you see what it appears to say compared to what it actually says? Sure, I have no doubt there is 100% real beef in there ... somewhere, but just how much is anyone's guess. (There's a good bet it's also adulterated with 100% soy, 100% paper-pulp, 100% MSG, etc...) "Made with" or "made from" is not the same as saying "made of." "Times less" is a similar phrase. It's a lot like saying "plus minus." The two words cancel each other out. The phrase makes it sound like you're getting a lot more "less" than simply saying one fifth. (It sounds really stupid when spelled out like that, doesn't it?) The reason that the two words look so odd together is basic math: Adding a negative sign to multiplication does not turn it into division.

Double negatives

We're told from childhood not to write using double negatives. The reason for this is that it is often unclear whether the two together are indicating an overall negative or a positive. In encyclopedic or any other formal writing they definitely should be avoided as colloquialisms. However, they are very common in colloquial speech, and people seem to idiomatically understand what they mean. In most cases, it is just basic math. Two negatives, when added or subtracted, form a negative: "I don't got no pajamas." On the other hand, when you multiply or divide two negatives, they become positive: "It's not that I don't want to do it."

Site, cite or sight?

I see this more and more, so I'm chalking it up to texting-illiteracy. "On site" means that something has, is, or will happen, or... is or was located, right in a specific spot, place, town, construction site, website, etc. "On sight" means: at the moment you first see something. "Cite" is simply the verb form of "citation". "The SWAT team was the first on site, citing their orders to shoot on sight."