Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Reading Guidelines
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Currently, there are no formal guidelines on Reading an article, and this can lead to a great deal of inconsistency 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 pronunciation.
Contents |
[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 practice to read the Contents section of most articles. 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] Infoboxes
Generally, it's up to you whether or not to read an infobox, and when in the article it should get read. You may decide to read it after the article introduction (usually after reading the table of contents), or in some cases at the end of the article as a summary of the article information. You should assess whether the infobox contains information that the rest of the article doesn't.
- If you do decide to read the infobox and you decide to read the table of contents of the article, you should probably read the contents first and also mention the infobox in your contents to give the listener an idea of when he/she will hear the infobox and how it fits into the structure of the article.
- A suitable way to introduce the infobox is as follows:
- "The following is an infobox which accompanies this article, and gives a summary of the main information about [Article] to supplement the arrangement of information in this article" followed by "[Article] infobox"
Reading out the information contained in an infobox 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 infoboxes are less likely to contain captions or descriptions, so you will need to plan what to say about the images in an infobox. However, please note that you should not attempt to describe the images yourself.
[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 2-3 second pause before reading a new section, and a 1-2 second pause before reading a subsection. As an alternative, slight variations in the stress for the section headings can achieve the same effect without slowing the pace of the reading.
[edit] Example
[...]The majority of modern book publishers now use acid-free paper.
[2-3 second break]
Section 1: Papermaking
[1-2 second break]
Section 1.1: Fiber Processing / Pulping
Wood or plant cell walls are composed of fibers bound together. [...]
or
[...]The majority of modern book publishers now use acid-free paper.
[Using a different reading tone]
Section 1: Papermaking
[Using a different reading tone]
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 who want to find more information about the article, or to check the sources of the article. As such it is not recommended that you read the references found in the article. You may however inform the listener that references to the information are available in the written form of the article.
An article "closing" is to be formulated that will provide the listener with a standard set of additional information and disclaimers, and one of these lines might include "There are references available in the written form of this article - please be sure to verify information found on Wikipedia using the references provided or cross-referencing the information yourself".
[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.
[edit] Quotations
The listener should be able to discern a quotation. The best method you use to identify the quote depends on the the whether there is an introductory phrase in the text, and the length of the quote.
When the quotation is short and has no introductory phrase, you may identify it by voice inflection and by allowing a sub-second pause before and after speaking it. An example of this kind of quotation is "some people think that 'shut up' is a terribly rude expression."
When a quotation is no more than a single sentence and has an introductory phrase, identify it by speaking the words "quote" and "end quote" preceding and following the quotation.
For a long quotation (multiple sentences), speaking "begin quotation" and "end quotation" provides more distinct offsetting of the passage.
