[WikiEN-l] Writing with our readers in mind

[Chris Jenkinson]

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Jon wrote:
> Do we have anywhere a statement that editors should think of their readers when writing? For me, that's commonsense: whether at work, speaking or writing to different clients, or chatting with friends, I always bear in mind who I am communicating with and trying to use words, language and style that suits them.
>  
> However, increasingly I see other editors deciding they prefer an "academic" style. What this means is that, if you are an academic in the field being discussed, you can understand what they are saying. However, if you are not, the articles remain impenetrable - and attempts to tweak them so they are more intelligible to the vast majority of readers get rebuffed.
>  
> It would be useful (if we don't already have it somewhere that I've missed) to have a firm statement that says articles should be written to be as intelligible to as many of our readers as possible, with our readers being anyone potentially searching for English-language information on the internet.

Could you provide some examples?

I personally would quite like to see a "layman's introduction" to some
articles, with more technical details later. This got discussed a bit on
the philosophy wikiproject:
 -->
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Philosophy#The_Philosophically_Illiterate

Chris

- --
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org
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