User:Iph/English

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General
UK This user uses British English.
OED This user uses Oxford spelling.
This user is reasonably stringent about correct English grammar. (However, he does not consider that to have any Freudian significance, and he considers the predefined userboxes {{User anal..}} rather offensive.)
Punctuation
“,;:’ This user is a punctuation stickler.
. The This user does not put two spaces after a full stop.
, This user fixes comma splices because they are wrong.
A, B, and C This user prefers the serial comma.
its & it’s This user understands the difference between its and it’s. So should you.
’s Thi's user know's that not every word that end's with s need's an apostrophe and will remove misused apostrophe's from Wikipedia with extreme prejudice.
“…” This user favours typographic quotation marks over typewriter style.
“…”? This user thinks “British punctuation is best for quotation marks”. Do you?

Indeed I consider what is termed American punctuation utterly illogical and cannot understand why it was ever adopted, because it was a blatant case of a typesetters’ union laying down the rules on the basis of their own convenience — that is, sheer dumb laziness — as opposed to grammatical or syntactical logic.
Grammar points
to¦go This user chooses to sometimes use split infinitives.
In fact, I consider the term "split infinitive" a total misnomer, and the marker to not part of the infinitive at all. However the term is still in use, is lexicalized, and has a Wikipedia article about it with that title, so I have got used to living with the almost universally understood misnomer.
less & fewer This user understands the difference between less & fewer.
whom This user insists upon using whom wherever it is called for, and fixes the errors of whomever he sees.
if & whether This user knows how to use "if" and "whether" correctly.
which & that This user knows how to use which and that correctly.
than / then This user understands the difference between using "than" and "then."
their / there / they’re This user thinks that there are too many people who don’t know that they’re worse than their own children at spelling!
your/ you’re This user thinks that if your grammar is incorrect, then you’re in need of help.
Latin Plurals: "Data is are..." This user uses "data", "media", "memoranda", "criteria", and "agenda" as the plurals of "datum", "medium", "memorandum", "criterion", and "agendum".
Style & Spelling
supercede This user considers spelling supersede with a -c- substandard.
Style & Usage
by The passive voice may be used by this user.

but only where there is a specific reason for not avoiding it.

mankind This user supports the use of gender-neutral language.

up to a point.

(s)he This user supports parallel usage.

until it becomes cumbersome. (s)he This user supports parallel usage.

man-
kind		 Regarding gender, this user will use the vernacular, not what is "politically correct".
since This user dislikes the use of since to mean because.
Subj This user likes that the Subjunctive mood be used. Were this user you, he would use it.

The most important example of this is the mandative subjunctive where I consider the subjunctive mandatory.

they This user considers the singular they to be substandard English usage.

On writing for an encyclopaedia

I am firmly of the opinion that, when writing for a modern work of reference such as an encyclopaedia (and, above all, when working on this unique world resource), the writer must focus on clarity and elimination of ambiguity. There is a Userbox template in the Grammar category that opines “This user joins with Dickens, Melville, and other great writers in rejecting the canard that “which” may not be used for restrictive relative clauses.” Well, it is not a canard; anyone wanting to write for a work of encyclopaedic reference in the 21st century has no business copying the idiosyncasies of 19th century novelists, however great they are alleged to be. Their circumstances were completely different. First, they were working over a century ago; and second, they were writing (chiefly) novels, and what may be fine in a novel may well be quite inappropriate in an encyclopaedia! As regards the choice of relative pronouns, the best primary criterion is the same as for most other questions of style and usage: consistency and distinction; where it is possible to use one specific word for each individual case in a specific grammatical context, writers should do so — and they should all agree to use the same convention, if at all possible. There may be debate about specific points, including that of the choice of pronouns for restrictive relative clauses, but the question of what novelists did more than a century ago is neither here nor there and irrelevant to that debate. The only criterion relevant to writing encyclopaedic material now is what works best, and on that a great deal has changed even in the last 50 years, never mind more than 100.

The same principle applies in the use of if and whether for indirect questions; if should be used only to introduce conditional clauses; whether should always be used to introduce indirect questions with binary answers (that is, answered "yes" or "no"). For example: "Researchers are trying to establish whether every case of this disease is caused by a virus". For emphasis, "whether" can always be replaced by "whether or not", and the weaker "if" should never be used in an encyclopedia — or, indeed, in non-fiction professional speaking such as in news broadcasts, documentary presentation or narration and the like — to introduce indirect questions.

This is about developing a form of English that, indeed, will not grant every individual the maximum amount of freedom to use whatever style they feel like; but that is only a low-level restriction when it comes to writing an encyclopaedia. Wikipedia already imposes several major curtailments of the freedom of writers to express themselves: they may not express opinions (NPOV); they may not include "original work" of any sort — every statement made must be based on pre-existing external authority. Therefore the argument based on the work of novelists is irrelevant for a third reason: Wiki work necessarily imposes limits on every contributing writer's freedom, for very good reasons, and using the freedom of expression argument is disallowed.

And there is a fourth reason for adopting more rigid writing rules and seeking greater stylistic consistency: foreign student readers. Wikipedia will never exist in every language on the planet; there are thousands. Many who come to English Wikipedia are likely to do so because Wikipedia does not exist in their mother tongue and because English is their first foreign language, for it is the most popular language to be learnt as a first foreign language, including by native speakers of minority languages. Therefore — even more, perhaps, than in some other language versions — English Wikipedia has a duty to achieve uniformity of usage for the sake of these visitors.

Therefore, to return to the "that" versus "which" example, because the distinction between restrictive and non-restirctive relative clauses is sometimes essential for correct, unambiguous understanding of what is being said, the adoption of such rules as "use that to introduce restrictive relative clauses" is important for the maximum success of Wikipedia as a global resource for the education of people round the world who gain access to the internet, and for the potential resulting improvement of their life chances.

On my claim to some expertise in writing factual information for the world

One of my roles for many years in industry was as a technical author. If I may be permitted to say so without accusation of totally excessive immodesty, even among my peers I was considered something of an expert on language and in particular on the English language. I wrote English language style and usage manuals as part of my job, as well as a great many other publications and documents, often on complex systems requiring great precision of expression. Many of those publications needed to be written either for readers who must be considered beginners at the technology involved, or for readers whose first language was not English, but who were to use the English version because no version in their own native language would ever be produced. Therefore lucidity and absence of ambiguity were always essential in the work I did, and I had many years to hone the skill of ensuring these and to reflect on what, in the actual writing, makes for these results. User IPH