User:Iph/English
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On writing for an encyclopaedia
I am firmly of the opinion that, when writing for a modern work of reference such as an encyclopaedia (and, above all, when working on this unique world resource), the writer must focus on clarity and elimination of ambiguity. There is a Userbox template in the Grammar category that opines “This user joins with Dickens, Melville, and other great writers in rejecting the canard that “which” may not be used for restrictive relative clauses.” Well, it is not a canard; anyone wanting to write for a work of encyclopaedic reference in the 21st century has no business copying the idiosyncasies of 19th century novelists, however great they are alleged to be. Their circumstances were completely different. First, they were working over a century ago; and second, they were writing (chiefly) novels, and what may be fine in a novel may well be quite inappropriate in an encyclopaedia! As regards the choice of relative pronouns, the best primary criterion is the same as for most other questions of style and usage: consistency and distinction; where it is possible to use one specific word for each individual case in a specific grammatical context, writers should do so — and they should all agree to use the same convention, if at all possible. There may be debate about specific points, including that of the choice of pronouns for restrictive relative clauses, but the question of what novelists did more than a century ago is neither here nor there and irrelevant to that debate. The only criterion relevant to writing encyclopaedic material now is what works best, and on that a great deal has changed even in the last 50 years, never mind more than 100.
The same principle applies in the use of if and whether for indirect questions; if should be used only to introduce conditional clauses; whether should always be used to introduce indirect questions with binary answers (that is, answered "yes" or "no"). For example: "Researchers are trying to establish whether every case of this disease is caused by a virus". For emphasis, "whether" can always be replaced by "whether or not", and the weaker "if" should never be used in an encyclopedia — or, indeed, in non-fiction professional speaking such as in news broadcasts, documentary presentation or narration and the like — to introduce indirect questions.
This is about developing a form of English that, indeed, will not grant every individual the maximum amount of freedom to use whatever style they feel like; but that is only a low-level restriction when it comes to writing an encyclopaedia. Wikipedia already imposes several major curtailments of the freedom of writers to express themselves: they may not express opinions (NPOV); they may not include "original work" of any sort — every statement made must be based on pre-existing external authority. Therefore the argument based on the work of novelists is irrelevant for a third reason: Wiki work necessarily imposes limits on every contributing writer's freedom, for very good reasons, and using the freedom of expression argument is disallowed.
And there is a fourth reason for adopting more rigid writing rules and seeking greater stylistic consistency: foreign student readers. Wikipedia will never exist in every language on the planet; there are thousands. Many who come to English Wikipedia are likely to do so because Wikipedia does not exist in their mother tongue and because English is their first foreign language, for it is the most popular language to be learnt as a first foreign language, including by native speakers of minority languages. Therefore — even more, perhaps, than in some other language versions — English Wikipedia has a duty to achieve uniformity of usage for the sake of these visitors.
Therefore, to return to the "that" versus "which" example, because the distinction between restrictive and non-restirctive relative clauses is sometimes essential for correct, unambiguous understanding of what is being said, the adoption of such rules as "use that to introduce restrictive relative clauses" is important for the maximum success of Wikipedia as a global resource for the education of people round the world who gain access to the internet, and for the potential resulting improvement of their life chances.
On my claim to some expertise in writing factual information for the world
One of my roles for many years in industry was as a technical author. If I may be permitted to say so without accusation of totally excessive immodesty, even among my peers I was considered something of an expert on language and in particular on the English language. I wrote English language style and usage manuals as part of my job, as well as a great many other publications and documents, often on complex systems requiring great precision of expression. Many of those publications needed to be written either for readers who must be considered beginners at the technology involved, or for readers whose first language was not English, but who were to use the English version because no version in their own native language would ever be produced. Therefore lucidity and absence of ambiguity were always essential in the work I did, and I had many years to hone the skill of ensuring these and to reflect on what, in the actual writing, makes for these results. User IPH