User:Mussavcom
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Yeah, hi. My main goal is to help.. eradicate some of the problems I see with Wikipedia. First of all, about half the contributors don't seem to think grammar is important , and they will totally ignore formatting(or other ) issues. Doesn't that bug the heck out of you? Additionally, a lot of contributors seem to think that, in order to write for an encyclopedia, you have to sound all smart and educated. This leads to speaking in archaic language (in both British and American English) or overly abstracting common, everyday objects. I have seen articles talk about human beings as if they were some foreign species to be studied, with odd behaviors barely intelligible to the authors. While that may be the case, you won't see any other, commercial encyclopedias speak as if they're fundamentally better than the reader and basically all of mankind.
If I've edited one of your contributions for grammar or just general language... if you don't like it, go ahead and revert it; this doesn't seem like it will be much of a problem, though, because most of the contributors that really bug me are too careless and sloppy anyway to go back and reread what they've written, let alone check up on it months later.
Leave a message on my talk page or IM me over AIM at isblueacolor to contact me.
Contents |
[edit] Random Language Stuff
Expect the list below to grow some, if I end up caring.
[edit] Grammar
..
[edit] Diction
Basically: Choose your words to avoid sounding pretentious. Some contributors just try too hard to sound smart and end up ruining the quality of an entire article. Every so often I may take an article and clean up the language just to get it sounding more human.
[edit] While vs Whilst
Whilst, technically, is perfectly acceptable. The problem is, it's very much archaic; it means the same thing as "while," but it's rarer. In Amerircan English especially, users of the word "whilst" will seem pretentious, snobbish or even offensive. If the English Language version of Wikipedia is supposed to cater to both British and American English, I strongly suggest you never use "whilst" in article text, unless, of course, you're referring to a specific title.
