Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words

Weasel words is a term used in Wikipedia to refer to unspecific disclaimers attached to what otherwise would be plain statements of opinion, rather than fact. Usually, weasel words are small phrases attached to the beginning of a statement, such as "some argue that..." or "critics say...", etc.. For example, an editor might preface the statement "Montreal is the best city in the world" with a disclaimer: "some people say that Montreal is the best city in the world".

The problem with weasel-worded statements isn't in their being outright false; on the contrary, some people do say that Montreal is the best city in the world, and in fact, the chief function of weasel words is that they can qualify just about any statement to be technically true. Rather, the problem is that it is entirely easy to write an irrelevant, misinformative, slanted article composed of nothing but true statements like these. So, some people say that Montreal is the best city in the world - Who are these people? When, where and why did they say that? What kind of bias might they have? How many is some? Consider the radically different answers these questions might have and what the average reader would make of them, and you might understand just how fundamentally lacking is a statement that uses the "what-some-people-say" qualification.

It is too easy to exploit Wikipedia and use it to spread hearsay, personal opinion and propaganda with Weasel words. Calling yourself an encyclopedia is often a sign of aspiring to be authoritative, and when people run across a statement credited to "critics" or "some people" in what they perceive to be an authoritative source they tend to suspend their disbelief and trust the source to have done its homework. If these "some people" are mentioned in an encyclopedia, they figure, they must be important, and this must really be the gist of their argument, and there's nothing important about these people or their argument that I'm not being told. All it takes is for somebody to tactically add "Critics have asserted that X" to some article, and there is a very real danger that the average reader will take their word for it.

Not coincidentally, there is a Wikipedia policy that deals with exactly that problem in more general terms: The verifiability policy, which provides specific criteria for what sort of support a statement must have for it to remain in an article if it is challenged. It is one of our core content policies, determining the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles (The other two are Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view) - and it is this policy that weasel words undermine.

Variations

There are different variations on weasel wording, with the general principle of introducing some proposition without attributing it to any concrete source. "Most scientists believe that..." fails to provide any evidence that this is indeed the case, or to clarify just where between 50% and 100% "most" is, for that matter. The case is similar with things that are apparently true "according to some studies" or "contrary to popular opinion". "It has been proven that" allusion to proof does not constitute proof, "Science says" that science is an abstract concept which in actuality is not capable of speech, and "it could be argued" that the no original research policy is there for a reason. And so forth, and so on.

It is, of course, acceptable to introduce some fact or opinion and attribute it in an inline citation. e.g. "Research by Wong et al, 1996, has shown that rabies can be cured by acupuncture".

And at the bottom of the page:

• W.F. Wong (1996). "Acupuncture: An effective cure for rabies". J. Rabid Med. 345: 33–67.

Other problems

The use of weasel words often creates other issues and problems in the text. Some of these are:

• Wordiness. Weasel words constitute sentence stuffing; they make sentences longer without carrying any information.
• Passive voice. Though it is in principle possible to make weasel-worded statements in the active voice, in practice it is often much more convenient to resort to the passive voice, e.g. "It has been said that...". While syntactically correct and sometimes appropriate, too much of it can throw an afflicted article's entire tone and flow out of balance.
• Convoluted syntax. Weasel words require some convoluted syntax to get a point across. "A square has four sides" is a simple sentence; "Though not universally, squares are widely regarded as having an even number of sides that has been conjectured by experts in the field to be approximately four" is, well, not. We should aim to inform, not to provide challenges in extreme reading comprehension.
• Implicit endorsement of faulty logic.
  • The word "clearly" and other words of its kind are often used to tell the reader that some established statements have brought conclusion to an argument or discussion. In some cases, this is all but true; in many others, it does injustice to alternate explanations and facts that may have been ignored. To test for whether the use of "clearly" is justified is relatively simple- substitute it for the logical leap it's making, that is, that the already established A, B, and C imply that necessarily Z. Then ponder, really necessarily? May this conclusion be challenged? Has it been challenged?
  • The Many people think... type of statement is often a thinly-veiled bandwagon fallacy. It wasn't put there to establish the context of the following statement (and naturally enough, it doesn't do that in the least bit). Rather, it serves to inspire awe and lead the reader's train of thought along the lines of, "oh, many people say this, obviously this must have a semblance of credibility to it".
• Repetition. There are only so many creative ways to phrase the general idea of "it has been asserted that", and an article constructed entirely of variations on this theme can get painfully repetitive. The requirement to properly cite and specify exactly who has asserted what, when and why is what stands between the article and a bloated, incoherent piece documenting everything that might have conceivably been said on the subject by anybody, ever. (In some particularly dreadful cases, unchecked articles degenerate all the way to thread mode - a continuous dialogue of partisan commentary along the lines of "Some argue... [..] Others respond... [..] Still others point out that [..]" ad nauseam.)

Improving weasel-worded statements

The {{weasel}} tag can be added to the top of an article or section to draw attention to the presence of weasel words. For less drastic cases, the {{weasel word}} tag () or the {{weasel-inline}} tag () (which includes an internal wikilink to this page) can be added directly to the phrase in question; same as the {{fact}} tag ().

The key to improving weasel words in articles is either a) to name a source for the opinion or b) to change opinionated language to concrete facts.

Peacock terms are especially hard to deal with without using weasel words. Again, consider the sentence "The Yankees are the greatest baseball team in history." It is tempting to rephrase this in a weaselly way, for example, "Some people think that the Yankees are the greatest baseball team in history." But how can this opinion be qualified with an opinion holder? There are millions of Yankees fans and hundreds of baseball experts who would pick the Yankees as the best team in history. Instead, it would be better to eliminate the middleman of mentioning this opinion entirely, in favor of the facts that support the assertion:

• "The New York Yankees have won 26 World Series championships—about three times as many as any other team."

This fact suggests that the Yankees are a superlative baseball franchise, rather than simply the greatest baseball team in history. The idea is to let the readers draw their own conclusions about the Yankees' greatness based on the number of World Series the Yankees have won. Objectivity over subjectivity. Dispassion, not bias.

Follow the spirit, not the letter

As with any rule of thumb, this guideline should be balanced against other needs for the text, especially the need for brevity and clarity. While ideally every assertion and assumption that is not necessarily true would have the various positions on it detailed and referenced, in practice much of human knowledge relies on the probably true rather than the necessarily true, and actually doing this would result in the article devolving into an incoherent jumble of backtracking explanations and justifications.

This means that opting for or against explicit citation ought not to be an automatic process, but rather a judgment call. How controversial is the statement being made? How prominent are alternative views? How relevant would introducing the controversy be to the progression of this specific article — relevant enough to be worth whatever strain on the narrative that will result? These are the important questions to be asking when dealing with citation issues. (See also: Ignore All rules).

See also

• Weasel word
• Wikipedia:Avoid peacock terms
• Wikipedia:Words to avoid
• Wikipedia:Avoid trite expressions
• Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles
• Template:Weasel
• Template:WW (small weasel template)