[WikiEN-l] Writing style (was: a valid criticism)

Fri Oct 7 09:25:14 UTC 2005

Charles Matthews wrote:

>Reading this list,. anyway, you'd think driving out 'amateurism' was defined
>by NPOV, NOR and sources.  Not by Fowler, Gowers, Strunk-White.  We hardly
>hear about 'style crimes'; and it has been argued that lame, academic style
>is kind of OK.
>More subediting needed.

Oh goodness yes. We need *good writers* in general.

I have a pile of links on style on my user page:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard#My_personal_style_guide

I will often see a badly-written article on something I know about and
do some rewriting with edit summary "tighten [section name]".

My favourite writing style is still that found in The Economist:
incredibly tight writing, giving simple sentences with a fantastic
density of information. They're not interested in NPOV - some of the
casual opinionation really makes me think of a friend's summary: "I
love The Economist. It's like a really rational guy on crack." - but I
think we have a *lot* to learn from their writing style.

- d.