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Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 121#MOS:IDENTITY clarification close

→ Discussion placed back at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 121#MOS:IDENTITY clarification close → Rearchived at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 173#Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 121#MOS:IDENTITY clarification close

Idea for recommendation

One thing I see every now and again is putting in a subordinate/modifier clause or a big block of text in brackets before explaining what it's on about. Something like:

She refused all requests, except for basics such as food, medicine, etc.

She, apart from basics such as food and medicine, refused all requests.

Or worse:

Unusually for an English river, the channel has moved significantly during historic times. It has been described as being similar to the Mississippi in this respect.

The river has, unusually for those situated in England, altered, in what experts describe as a similar way to the Mississippi, its channel significantly during historic times.

Could we have some kind of statement that any aside comments should be moved to the end of the sentence (or into a new one) if they get long enough to start to overpower the sentence? This could be a small addition to the section on parentheses (the bit that mentions that splitting is often better) to say that the same is true for clauses. Blythwood (talk) 08:25, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

This is less of an issue of correct vs. incorrect English and more of an issue of graceful and intelligible vs. awkward English. What we weigh here is whether the problem of these convoluted sentences is big enough to merit including a rule about them in the MoS. The downside of doing so is that a lot of editors will treat anything that goes into the MoS as a hard and fast rule, remove even good cases of asides in the middle and punish editors who place them there. Can you name a few articles or types of articles in which sentences like this have caused problems or appear too often?

Even if this information doesn't end up in WP:MOS, it might be appropriate for WP:BETTER. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:10, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

I suspect this particular style may sometimes come from editors who are used to writing in German (or a similar language).I don't think it really belongs here, but I agree that it is worth considering for somewhere like WP:BETTER.

Perhaps we should revisit the second paragraph of WP:MOS, which currently has

"The Manual of Style documents Wikipedia's house style. Its goal is to make using Wikipedia easier and more intuitive by promoting clarity and cohesion, while helping editors write articles with consistent and precise language, layout, and formatting. Plain English works best; avoid ambiguity, jargon, and vague or unnecessarily complex wording."

It might be better to stress a consistent house style and point readers to WP:BETTER for "clarity and cohesion" and other advice about writing style (which is really a different meaning of style).

WP:BETTER could include one or more sections on flow, cohesion, and coherence, which can be a particular problem for Wikipedia, because consecutive sentences, or even parts of sentences, are often written by different people. That might also be the place to address the recurring issue of when to use the active and passive voices, which can be addressed in terms of things like "flow".

--Boson (talk) 13:07, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough. I think I'll look at adding it to WP:BETTER. Blythwood (talk) 20:17, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

• This strikes me as being unnecessary instruction creep... If you think an article will be improved by re-writing certain sentences... go ahead and re-write them. FIX the problem... don't just complain about it. Blueboar (talk) 12:08, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

• That goes without saying, but one can only solve some specific instances. The point of adding a guideline is having something to point other editors to, so that they can better understand how to fix the problem by themselves. Diego (talk) 17:22, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

The problem with adding things to guidelines is that readers may think that there is only one acceptable way to fix the problem... and there are often multiple ways to do so. Blueboar (talk) 12:29, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Blueboar. And on active–passive, it's too context-dependent for adding "rules" to the MOS. In the most general terms, preferring active over passive where all other things are equal, maybe; but it's better to deal with it on a tutorial-style page. Tony (talk) 06:07, 5 October 2015 (UTC)