User:AshLin/Academy2

Exercise 2 - Developing an article

This is the second of a series of suggested exercises prepared by User:AshLin to help get new editors get on track and become productive contributors as early as possible.

The aim of this exercise is to teach simple development of an article with slightly more complicated actions than in the previous one. There are a number of exercises of the same kind on this page. Each editor needs to do only one to get the basic idea and can then go on to the next exercise in User:AshLin/Academy3.

#1 - Octracoderm

• Suggested preliminary activity:
  • Read Wikipedia:Copyedit to be familiar with copy-editing.
  • Read the short article on Ostracoderm.
• Overall aim : To add a fact, do some copyedits and later add a reference for it.

Step one - Add a fact

• Aim : To add a fact.
• Where : At the end of the first paragraph whih ends "....into their mouths.."
• Instructions :
  • Go to Ostracoderm.
  • Press the edit link on top of the article page.
  • Copy the text given under "Material to be added" and paste it at the place indicated above. Copy the text from this page itself (and not by pressing the edit link for this section).
  • After pasting, press the "Review" button under the edit button. If you scroll up, you can see how the amended article will look. This preview permits typos or other errors to be detected and corrected before saving. If there is an error, correct it and review again till it is correct in all respects.
  • Give an edit summary in the text box below the edit window. Suggested edit summary for this edit is - "Adding material on the discovery of ostracoderms."
  • Press "Save".
• Material to be added :

Ostracoderms were the first fossil fish to be discovered. The Swiss anatomist Louis Agassiz received some fossils of bony armoured fish from Scotland in the 1830s. He had a hard time classifying them as they did not resemble any living creature. He compared them at first with extant armoured fish such as catfish and sturgeons but later realising that they had no moveable jaws, classified them in 1844 into a new group "ostracoderms" which means "shell-skinned".

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Step two - Copy editting

• Aim: to copy-edit.
• Where: In the material just added.
• Instructions :
  • Click the edit tab button on top of the page.
  • Change the spelling from "armoured"to "armored". (Both spellings are correct, one in British English, the other in American English. Since this article was started in American English, we should use American English spellings throughout.)
  • Adding two opening/closing square brackets on each side of a word/phrase converts it into a wikilink to the article of the same name. Add double square brackets to the following -

1. Swiss ( Will look like this after your edit - [[Swiss]]
2. Louis Agassiz
3. Scotland
4. catfish
5. sturgeon (Note: let the plural "s" be ouside the square brackets. It should finally look like this. - [[sturgeon]]s)

• • After each edit, use the review feature to check that your copy-edits are correct.
  • Save your work. Suggested edit summary - "Corrected spelling. Copy-edits (wikilinking)."

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Step three - Add the reference

• Aim: To add a reference.
• Where: After the fullstop following the last word ("Shell-skinned") of the material you added.
• Instructions : As above for adding a fact. Suggested edit summary - "Adding a reference to newly added material."
• Material to be added:

<ref>{{cite book |title=Discovering Fossil Fishes |last=Maisey |first=John G. |year=1996 |publisher=Henry Holt & Company|location=New York |isbn= |page=37 |edition=illustrated}}</ref>

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