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| The Medical Manual of Style presents community consensus on health articles, but people who are not interested in health are welcome to comment there also. ]] 14:07, 4 September 2014 (UTC) | The Medical Manual of Style presents community consensus on health articles, but people who are not interested in health are welcome to comment there also. ]] 14:07, 4 September 2014 (UTC) | ||
| :"WikiProject Medicine maintains its own manual of style" is not correct, nor is "the policies developed by WikiProject Medicine". WP:MED maintains no |
:"WikiProject Medicine maintains its own manual of style" is not correct, nor is "the policies developed by WikiProject Medicine". WP:MED maintains no policies at all, and while it does maintain it's own Manual of Style {{em|sub}}-page, it is subordinate to the main one and to the general rules in the not-field-specific sub-pages like ]; it is not "its own manual of style" in distinction to MOS. This is a matter of policy, at ]. If WP:MED wants to do something notably divergent from the mainstream MOS, editors who participate in that project should seek consensus outside their topical camp, to change the broader guidelines (either to apply more generally what the wikiproject want to do specifically, because it's a better approach, or to account for what the wikiproject wants to do as an explicit exception to general practice, and why).<p>That said, ] policy trumps ]; any facts added to a WP article's lead (which is not a ]) have to have citations somewhere in the article. If the facts are not in the main body of the article and cited there, then they have to be cited in the lead. That also means rewriting is in order, because something in the lead should also be mentioned in the main body of the article, as the lead is just a summary.</p><p>There is no WP rule that citations should be used after every sentence. Universally, they should be used after every fact or string of facts that come from a single source. There's no problem adding {{em|more}} citations to the same source, if several discrete but contiguous sentences came from the same source, especially if they're discrete enough that someone might insert other material between them. But some sentences require multiple internal citations when facts in them come from separate sources. I.e., there is no relationship of any kind between "a sentence has ended" and "facts need citations". <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — ] ] ] ≽<sup>ʌ</sup>ⱷ҅<sub>ᴥ</sub>ⱷ<sup>ʌ</sup>≼ </span> 20:29, 6 September 2014 (UTC)</p> | ||
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Lead length should be based on {chars/word} + {words/paragraph} not just raw characters
"Lead Length" should be based on {chars/word} + {words/paragraph} not just raw characters. Yes, it will vary based on article size but that is inevitable. This measurement concept holds equally true for Roman and Cyrillic texts, so this is about maintaining some semblance of a status quo for text readability.
However, the current character "Lead" size recommendations are overall too large and of no help to readability. The numbers seem to be derived out of thin air.
Here is my view on how the text should read. The text here really should have some text referring to word and sentence length. This is the most minimal modification to keep things sensible.
| Revised version | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
LengthThe appropriate length of the lead section depends on the total length of the article. As a general guideline—but not absolute rule—the lead should usually be no longer than four paragraphs. The length of the lead should conform to readers' expectations of a short, but useful and complete, summary of the topic. A lead that is too short leaves the reader unsatisfied; a lead that is too long is difficult to read and may cause the reader to lose interest halfway. The following suggestions about lead length may be useful ("article length" refers to readable prose size):
Note that 20,000 characters is about the length of a short story, based on 4.5 characters per word and 7.5 words per sentence. Paragraphs should contain between 2 and 11 sentences on average. Lead sections that reflect or expand on sections in other articles are discussed at Summary style. Journalistic conventions for lead sections are discussed at News style. |
Eyreland (talk) 01:27, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
- I don't object to changes of character/para recommendations, but I do object to the added text "Paragraphs should contain between 2 and 11 sentences on average." Show me an article with a lead paragraph of 11 sentences, that is neither too long and hard to read, nor too clunky and full of unnecessarily short, simple sentences. I would think 6 sentences to a paragraph is generous enough - even the lead of World War I doesn't go beyond that, and WWI needed two paragraphs beyond the recommended "no longer than four". Maybe the problem lies with "7.5 words per sentence"; sentences should be way longer than that. Bilorv (Contribs) 09:02, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
Citations in lede for medicine
WikiProject Medicine maintains its own manual of style at WP:MEDMOS, and at Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#References in the lead there is currently a discussion about requiring citations to be used in the lede. This follows another WikiProject Medicine pseudo-policy which suggests that citations should be used after every sentence. I am sharing notice of this here because I feel that the policies developed by WikiProject Medicine tend to influence other parts of Misplaced Pages.
This discussion is being introduced because of WikiProject Medicine's efforts through the Translation Task Force to translate English language health articles into other languages. This translation starts with the ledes of articles, then does more if volunteers are available. Before translating any text that text must go through a review process, and since people are reviewing only the ledes for translation, people have found that sometimes information in the ledes is of lower quality due to lack of citations than text in the body of the article.
The Medical Manual of Style presents community consensus on health articles, but people who are not interested in health are welcome to comment there also. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:07, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
- "WikiProject Medicine maintains its own manual of style" is not correct, nor is "the policies developed by WikiProject Medicine". WP:MED maintains no policies at all, and while it does maintain it's own Manual of Style sub-page, it is subordinate to the main one and to the general rules in the not-field-specific sub-pages like MOS:LEAD; it is not "its own manual of style" in distinction to MOS. This is a matter of policy, at WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. If WP:MED wants to do something notably divergent from the mainstream MOS, editors who participate in that project should seek consensus outside their topical camp, to change the broader guidelines (either to apply more generally what the wikiproject want to do specifically, because it's a better approach, or to account for what the wikiproject wants to do as an explicit exception to general practice, and why).
That said, WP:V policy trumps WP:MOS; any facts added to a WP article's lead (which is not a lede) have to have citations somewhere in the article. If the facts are not in the main body of the article and cited there, then they have to be cited in the lead. That also means rewriting is in order, because something in the lead should also be mentioned in the main body of the article, as the lead is just a summary.
There is no WP rule that citations should be used after every sentence. Universally, they should be used after every fact or string of facts that come from a single source. There's no problem adding more citations to the same source, if several discrete but contiguous sentences came from the same source, especially if they're discrete enough that someone might insert other material between them. But some sentences require multiple internal citations when facts in them come from separate sources. I.e., there is no relationship of any kind between "a sentence has ended" and "facts need citations". — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 20:29, 6 September 2014 (UTC)