Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Usage

The main purpose of this page is to explain terms used by some copyeditors in edit summaries. These suggestions only reliably apply to narrative writing, that is, sequences of actual events and any additional text that provides context. Feel free to edit this page, but avoid overlapping anything that Wikipedia already has a page on, such as style guidelines. Also note that this page isn't about how people ought to write, but what kinds of narrative writing do and don't do well at FAC and A-class.

• An appositive (in many but not all grammar books) follows, expands on, and acts as the same part of speech as the words it follows: "my cousin Edna", "later that same day". If there's a comma before the appositive, then a comma is needed after it unless there's already some punctuation there (according to most American style guides, at least). This includes dates and places: in Raleigh, North Carolina, on July 4, 1776, ...

• cause: Give some thought to whether since, because, caused by, as a result, due to, thus, therefore, and other cause-and-effect words are the words you want. Use after instead of because in: they retreated because the enemy broke through their lines, since the readers can figure out that one led to the other. Avoid therefore in: The ship stayed in port two days loading low-grade coal, and therefore never caught up to the fleeing destroyer. (Therefore ... because the ship stayed in port two days, because it loaded coal, or because the coal was low-grade? It's better not to raise the question if the answer isn't clear.) Even when there's some degree of causation (unrest caused by government repression), it's often better to find a less emphatic word (unrest spurred by government repression, government repression led to unrest); motivations are usually complex and often unknowable, and misrepresenting complex questions as simple may be considered non-neutral. And of course, don't say or imply that one thing caused another if your sources don't back that up.

• chronology: Generally order a storyline chronologically within a section or subsection.

• clarity: Read your work slowly to make sure that you're saying what you mean to say. Avoid obscure technical terms. For words and phrases that are common in the sources and hard to do without but unfamiliar to a lot of our readers, provide a link to a Wikipedia page or section of a page that clarifies the term. If many readers won't even be able to guess what the sentence means without clicking, give at least a clue to the meaning in the text in addition to the link.

• conciseness: If there's a way to replace any long string of words with a few words without losing any information, do it. "Being" and other forms of the verb "to be" are often used redundantly.

• consistency: Be consistent with names of things and with formats, such as units of measurement and currency, and times and dates.

• dangler: A word (especially a pronoun) "dangles" if you can't tell which other words it's referring to. It's not clear whether the pronoun which refers to the order or the abrupt exit here: He left abruptly after delivering the order, which was misinterpreted by the sergeant.

• An element is a word or string of words that functions as a grammatical unit; so, an adverbial element is a word or string of words that acts as an adverb: "in the dark of night".

• mindreading: Don't report on what people were thinking unless your sources make a good case that they know what people were thinking and that the thoughts were an important part of the story. Instead of They decided to build torpedo boats (or intended or wanted), just say They built torpedo boats or (occasionally) They started building torpedo boats or They submitted an order for torpedo boats.

• overemphasis: Politicians, advertisers and con artists often adopt a fancy, emphatic and redundant style. If you don't want to sound like them, don't do the same.

• part of speech: a noun, pronoun, adjective, article, verb, adverb, conjunction, preposition or interjection, or sometimes, an element that acts as one of these.

• repetition: If possible, don't say the same thing twice, using the same or different words. Avoid New here: New carriers under development.

• series: The elements in a series ("X, Y and Z") should be parallel. Avoid her in: The ship's guns, crane and her fuel tanks. ("her crane and her fuel tanks" would be parallel, but "her" is redundant to "The ship's".) If one element is more complex than the others, it often works best to put that element last in the series.

• voice: Avoid frequent use of the passive voice (in which the object of the action is the subject of the sentence).