On 7/19/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Let me give you an example. If I were writing an
article on a drug and
I included the sentence "tyrosine is an amino acid", I would be
expressing a relation that is learnt in secondary education. It being
an amino acid is the first thing anyone would learn about tyrosine. Is
this reference worthy?
Have a look at [[Tyrosine]]. The sentence in question reads:
"Tyrosine (from the Greek tyros, meaning cheese, as it was first
discovered in cheese), 4-hydroxyphenylalanine, or
2-amino-3(4-hydroxyphenyl)-propanoic acid, is one of the 20 amino
acids that are used by cells to synthesize proteins. "
While the factoid (the usual connotation is different but I like this
word in the sense as the smallest information unit) tyrosine=amino
acid is something a secondary school pupil in the industrialized world
has learnt (that leaves about 4.5 billion people), the context itself
is something that could live with a reference.
In this case, you can watch for redundancy: There are wikilinks to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_%28biology%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_biosynthesis and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein
If these articles (especially the Amino acid one) is already heavily
referenced, you feel a little more relaxed. Otherwise: Find a suitable
reference that serves to provice information to any of the factoids
(see above) in that sentence.
Mathias