Editing Incubator escapee wiki:Writing better articles (section)

=== Check your facts === <!-- This section is linked from [[Wikipedia:Check your facts]] -->
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Write material that is true: check your facts. Do not write material that is false. This might require that you verify your alleged facts.

This is a crucial part of [[Wikipedia:Citing sources|citing good sources]]: even if you think you know something, you have to provide references anyway to prove to the reader that the fact is true. Material that seems to naturally stem from sourced claims might not have been actually claimed. In searching for good references to cite, you might even learn something new.

Be careful about deleting material that may be factual. If you are inclined to delete something from an entry, first consider checking whether it is true. If material ''is'' apparently factual, in other words substantiated and cited, be extra careful about deleting. An encyclopedia is a collection of facts. If another editor provided a fact, there was probably a reason for it that should not be overlooked. Therefore, consider each fact provided as potentially precious. Is the context or overall presentation the issue? If the fact does not belong in one particular article, maybe it belongs in another.

Examine entries you have worked on subsequent to revision by others. Have facts been omitted or deleted? It may be the case that you failed to provide sufficient substantiation for the facts, or that the facts you incorporated may need a clearer relationship to the entry. Protect your facts, but also be sure that they are presented meaningfully.

==== Check your fiction ====<!-- This section is linked from [[Wikipedia:Disambiguation]] -->
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{{Main|Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction)}}

The advice about factual articles also applies to articles on fiction subjects. Further considerations apply when writing about fictional topics because they are ''inherently not real''. It is important to keep these articles verifiable and encyclopedic.

If you add fictional information, clearly distinguish fact and fiction. As with normal articles, establish context so that a reader unfamiliar with the subject can get an idea about the article's meaning without having to check several links. Instead of writing:

: {{!xt|'''Trillian''' is [[Arthur Dent]]'s girlfriend. She was taken away from Earth by [[Zaphod]] when he met her at a party. She meets Dent while travelling with Zaphod.}}

write:

: {{xt|'''Trillian''' is a [[fictional character]] from [[Douglas Adams]]'s radio, book and film series ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]''. In the first book, Trillian is introduced to the main character [[Arthur Dent]] on a spaceship. In her backstory, she was taken away from Earth when the space alien [[Zaphod Beeblebrox]] met her at a party.}}

==== Use of fictional tenses ====
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Works of fiction are generally considered to "come alive" for their audience. They therefore exist in a kind of perpetual present, regardless of when the fictional action is supposed to take place relative to the reader's "now". Thus, generally you should write about fiction using the ''[[Historical present#In describing fiction|historical present tense]]'', not the past tense. (See {{section link|WP:Manual of Style|Verb tense}} and {{section link|WP:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction|Contextual presentation}}.)
Examples:

: Homer ''{{xt|presents}}'', Achilles ''{{xt|rages}}'', Andromache ''{{xt|laments}}'', Priam ''{{xt|pleads}}''.
: {{xt|Holden Caulfield ''has'' a certain disdain for what he ''sees'' as 'phony'.}}
: {{xt|''Friends'' ''is'' an American sitcom that ''was'' aired on NBC.}}

Conversely, discussion of history is usually written in the past tense and thus "fictional history" may be presented in that way as well.

: {{xt|Chroniclers ''claimed'' that Thalestris, queen of the Amazons, ''seduced'' Alexander the Great.}}

Articles about fictional topics should not read like [[book report]]s; instead, they should explain the topic's significance to the work. After reading the article, the reader should be able to understand why a character, place, or event was included in the fictional work.

Editors are generally discouraged from adding fictional information from sources that cannot be verified or are limited to a very small number of readers, such as [[fan fiction]] and online role-playing games. In the latter case, if you absolutely have to write about the subject, please be especially careful to cite your sources.

If the subject, say a character in a television show, is too limited to be given a full article, then integrate information about that character into a larger article. It is better to write a larger article about the television show or a fictional universe itself than to create all sorts of stubs about its characters that nobody can find.

==== Stay on topic ====
{{Redirect|WP:TOPIC|information about the Topic namespace|Wikipedia:Flow}}
{{Redirect|WP:OFFTOPIC|the guideline on collapsing off-topic talk page discussions|Wikipedia:TALKOFFTOPIC}}
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The most readable articles contain no irrelevant (nor only loosely relevant) information. While writing an article, you might find yourself digressing into a side subject. If you are wandering off-topic, consider placing the additional information into a different article, where it will fit more closely with that topic. If you provide a link to the other article, readers who are interested in the side topic have the option of digging into it, but readers who are not interested will not be distracted by it.