User talk:ThatPeskyCommoner/Plain English for policies

A thought, it might be impossible to gain consensus to do anything to policies - even adding summaries or plain-English versions. One way around that would be to create an FAQ for newbies with 3 sentence descriptions of core policies, then use the FAQ in welcome templates. I noticed our welcome template links to some very large and complex pages, instead of just telling newbies to write neutrally and cite sources, etc. User:King4057 18:25, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm hoping to start with little steps! Already working on a very easy-to-read mini-introduction to some policies. What I;d like to do (most probably gradually) is have a team going through policy pages, making them just more readable, for more people. I had quite a good trawl through the civility policy a little while back, and it seems to have stuck well and been generally accepted. Pesky (talk) 05:32, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Active vs passive. This is a bit of a shibboleth, exacerbated by Microsoft's truly awful grammar checker. In many cases passive is the best voice, in others it is not. Focussing more tightly on specific examples might be useful as a style guide in general, but probably not as a "Plain English" guide.

Target audience - I always imagine I'm writing for a bright fourteen-year-old, with English as a very strong second language. This means I should:

Avoid idiom
Avoid euphemism
Avoid unnecessary jargon
Keep sentences simple
Use on-topic vocabulary without fear

Redundancy, circumlocution, litotes, meta-statements.

It should be noted that the not un-white lupine rabbit made its way to its burrow.

=> The white rabbit went to its burrow.

There are also ways of untwisting sentences that I can't describe, I'll see if I can find an example or two. Rich Farmbrough, 04:31, 30 August 2012 (UTC).[reply]

Oh yes, my favourites are "police speak" - I suspect editors think these words have an "encyclopaedic tone" - in my opinion they sound childish.

"proceeding" for "going"
"residence" for "home"
"persons" for "people" (and of course the much condemned "individual" for "person")
"resides" for "lives"

Rich Farmbrough, 04:31, 30 August 2012 (UTC).[reply]

On police speak, the first thing I always remember is when a brand-new police station was built, with its own brand-new road, and the police themselves were asked to come up with a name for the road. (Yes, this is actually true, I've seen the police station and the road in question!) They proved that they were human after all ... they called it Letsby Avenue ;P

But to get back to the real purpose of the talk page (though I prefer things which are multifunctional, myself), these ideas / guidelines of yours are good. On the active / passive voice thing, just from personal experience. I find active voice gets the idea across more clearly and quickly, when I'm teaching, and it was really interesting to read up on some of the literature which agrees with that one. A judicious mixture can work well, with the principle in passive and the instruction in active. "An article should be written in xyz way; this means that you should be doing abc in your writing" kinda thing. Pesky (talk) 03:23, 1 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]