Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Reading Guidelines

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Currently, there are no formal guidelines on Reading an article, and this can lead to a great deal of inconsistancy and mistakes.
Therefore, some are being collaborated below.

These rules are a guideline only. If the rules prevent you from improving or producing a recording, ignore them.

When trying to produce a professional recording, try to imagine what you think a professional recording sounds like.
Try to imagine your listeners trying to follow your article as you read it. You don't want them to be too concerned about you or your voice or what the article said when it was written because you're not reading it fluently or flowingly.
For this reason, you should probably rehearse your readings. Make sure you have an excellent understanding of the article. If necessary print the article out and use pens and highlighters to make notes that will help you while you're reading, by inserting commas (,) or slashes (/) to help remind you to take a small pause in an article, or to highlight places that need special pronounciation.

[edit] Introduction

The introduction is the text at the beginning of an article, that usually doesn't have a heading, and is used to summarise the subject of the article.
Typically the introduction is read first in your article, or second if you wish to introduce the sound recording, its date, its author, or other introductory notes.

[edit] Contents

As boring as it may seem, it is good practise to read most articles with a Contents section. This gives the listener an idea of the structure of the article, and what you will be reading. For example you may also be reading one or more Info Boxes (see the following section for more info) but you might be doing this at the end of the article, or sooner.
If a Contents box has many nodes/sections with many subsections/subnodes, you may decide to read out only the major sections. This is acceptable because it still gives the listener an idea of the structure of an article.

[edit] Info Boxes

Generally, it's up to you whether or not to read an Info Box, and when in the article it should get read. You may decide to read it after the article's introduction (usually after reading the contents), or in some cases at the end of the article as a summary of the article's information.
You should assess whether the Info Box contains information that the rest of the article doesn't.

• If you do decide to read the Info Box and you decide to read the Contents of the article, you should probably read the contents first and even mention the Info Box in your contents to give the listener an idea of when he/she will hear the Info Box and how it fits into the structure of the article.
• A suitable way to introduce the Info Box is as follows:
  

"The following is an Infobox about [Article] which accompanies this article, and gives a summary of the main information about [Article] to supplement the arrangement of information in this article" and then "[Article] Infobox"

Reading out the information contained in an Info Box may prove difficult and tedious, and may often sound boring and long-winded, which is why you may choose to only read it at the end of your article.
However, if you do decide to read an infobox, do take some time to rehearse and find out what the various terms are referring to. For example, the infobox of Johannesburg says "Population: Ranked 96th" - and this is not explained in the article. Reading that in your recording may only confuse your listener. But if you click on the link "Ranked 96th" you will see it is referring to Metropolitan Areas around the world. Thus you should be reading: "Population: Ranked 96th in Metropolitan Areas around the world". Furthermore, images in Info Boxes are less likely to contain captions or descriptions, so you will need to plan what to say about the images in a Info Box. But note that you should not attempt to describe the images yourself: see the section below about Pictures/Images.

[edit] Headings

The listener needs to differentiate between when you are moving on to a new section or subsection of an article

[edit] Numbering Sections

When introducing a new section or major heading, begin by saying "Section 1: [Name of Section]", e.g. "Section 1: History".
This includes sub-headings, such as "Section 1.3: 1970s - 1980s".
Note: You can determine the section numbers if there's a Table of Contents at the beginning of the article. If there isn't one, you may have to calculate these numbers yourself.

[edit] Timing

Optional: To make your recording more 'neat', it may help to leave a 3-4 second pause before reading a new section, and a 2-3 second pause before reading a subsection

[edit] Example

[...]The majority of modern book publishers now use acid-free paper.
[3-4 second break]
Section 1: Papermaking
[2 second break]
Section 1.1: Fiber Processing / Pulping
Wood or plant cell walls are composed of fibers bound together. [...]

[edit] Pictures/Images

You should always mention (but not describe) a picture in an article so that the listener is aware of this and knows to return to the article to look at the picture if he/she wants to. This is usually done by saying "Image: [Caption]" if the image has a caption, or just "Image" if the image has no caption. In certain cases you may wish to say "..and an image accompanied this section of the article, with the caption [caption]".

Generally you should only describe pictures if:

• The image has no caption and
• The article does not describe the picture and
• The listener would benefit from such a description.

The article on Cats for example has several images, but it is not necessary to describe them because they have captions.

Otherwise, do not attempt to describe the pictures because this can lead to inaccuracy, bias, deviation from a neutral point of view, errors, and irrelevance.

[edit] References

References are only useful for people that want to find more information about the article, or to check the sources of the article.
There seems to be no policy on whether or not to include the references in your reading, but perhaps a policy should be formulated here.

[edit] External Links

External links are read to inform the listener that there are additional links about their article on the internet (should they wish to return to the written article to access them). Therefore, you should not read the actual web addresses of any of the links.

[edit] Categories

Categories should not be read.