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Chalo Chatu:Writing better articles: Difference between revisions
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Chalo Chatu:Writing better articles (view source)
Revision as of 07:41, 8 January 2018
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==== Articles covering subtopics ==== | ==== Articles covering subtopics ==== | ||
Wikipedia articles tend to grow in a way that leads to the natural creation of new articles. The text of any article consists of a sequence of related but distinct subtopics. When there is enough text in a given subtopic to merit its own article, that text can be [[WP:Summary style|summarized]] in the present article and a link provided to the more detailed article.<!--note:nearly verbatim from [[WP:SS]]<ref>A similar approach is an [[WP:Article series|article series]], in which related articles are connected to each other with a special-purpose index box. An example of this is [[Isaac Newton#Biography]], where articles on various periods of his life are listed in {{tl|IsaacNewtonSegments}}.</ref> Note: commenting out this footnote because [[WP:Article series]] needs some work.--> [[Zambia]] is an example of an article covering subtopics: it is divided into subsections that give an overview of the sport, with each subsection leading to one or more subtopic articles. | Wikipedia articles tend to grow in a way that leads to the natural creation of new articles. The text of any article consists of a sequence of related but distinct subtopics. When there is enough text in a given subtopic to merit its own article, that text can be [[WP:Summary style|summarized]] in the present article and a link provided to the more detailed article.<!--note:nearly verbatim from [[WP:SS]]<ref>A similar approach is an [[WP:Article series|article series]], in which related articles are connected to each other with a special-purpose index box. An example of this is [[Isaac Newton#Biography]], where articles on various periods of his life are listed in {{tl|IsaacNewtonSegments}}.</ref> Note: commenting out this footnote because [[WP:Article series]] needs some work.--> [[Zambia]] is an example of an article covering subtopics: it is divided into subsections that give an overview of the sport, with each subsection leading to one or more subtopic articles. | ||
==Information style and tone== | |||
Two styles, closely related and not mutually exclusive, tend to be used for Wikipedia articles. The tone , however, should always remain formal, impersonal , and | |||
dispassionate. | |||
These styles are summary style, which is the arrangement of a broad topic into a main article and side articles, each with subtopical sections; and the inverted pyramid style (or news style, though this term is ambiguous), which prioritizes key information to the top, followed by supporting material and details, with background information at the bottom. | |||
A feature of both styles, and of all Wikipedia articles, is the presence of the | |||
lead section, a summarizing overview of the most important facts about the topic. The | |||
infobox template found at the top of many articles is a further distillation of key points. | |||
=== Summary style === | |||
Summary style may apply both across a category of articles and within an article. Material is grouped and divided into sections that logically form discrete subtopics, and which over time may spin off to separate articles, to prevent excessive article length as the main article grows. As each subtopic is spun off, a concise summary of it is left behind with a pointer (usually using the {{tlx|Main}} template) to the new side article. | |||
There are three main advantages to using summary style: | |||
* Different readers want varying amounts of detail, and this style permits them to choose how much they are exposed to. Some readers need just a quick summary and are satisfied by the lead section; others seek a moderate amount of info, and will find the main article suitable to their needs; yet others want a lot of detail, and will be interested in reading the side articles. | |||
* An article that is too long becomes tedious to read. Progressively summarizing and spinning off material avoids overwhelming the reader with too much text at once. | |||
* An excessively detailed article is often one that repeats itself or exhibits writing that could be more concise. The development of summary-style articles tends to naturally clear out redundancy and bloat, though in a multi-article topic this comes at the cost of some necessary cross-article redundancy (i.e., a summary of one article in another). | |||
The exact organizing principle of a particular summary-style article is highly context-dependent, with various options, such as chronological, geographical, and alphabetical (primarily in lists), among others. | |||
Some examples of summary style are the featured articles ''[[Association football]]'' and ''[[Music of the Lesser Antilles]]''. | |||
