I answered the question: What is Simple English Wikipedia? in Part 1. In Part 2, I shared a couple of basic things you can do to study English on Simple English Wikipedia. And in Part 3, I wrote about why it is okay for English students to write for Simple English Wikipedia. Now, in this Part 4, I will help answer the question: How should I write for Simple English Wikipedia?

When writing a Simple English Wikipedia article, the first paragraph is the most important. It gives you all the most basic information about the subject. Lets look at a few examples from Simple English Wikipedia from the “very good article” category. When you are reading these pay particular attention to the first sentence.

Hanami (花見? literally “flower viewing”) is the Japanese traditional custom of enjoying the beauty of flowers, especially cherry blossoms (桜 or 櫻 sakura). The practice of Hanami is more than a thousand years old, and is still very popular in Japan today. It takes place in the Spring, contrary to the custom of Momijigari (紅葉狩り), which is celebrated in the Autumn. The blossoms only last for a week or two, usually from March to April, and they are followed by the media and waited for by most of the Japanese people. Full bloom (満開 mankai) usually comes about one week after the opening of the first blossoms (開花 kaika).[1] Another week later, the blooming peak is over and the blossoms are falling from the trees.

Homer Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television show The Simpsons voiced by Dan Castellaneta. He is a very popular character in The Simpsons and has a famous catchphrase, “D’oh!”. Homer is also named after Matt Groening’s father.

Chopsticks are sticks that are used in some Asian countries to carry food from the plate or bowl to the eater’s mouth. They are made of wood, gold, silver, ivory, bamboo, or plastic. Gold and silver chopsticks are very heavy and cost a lot of money.

The first thing I want you to notice is how the first sentence in each example answers in the simplest possible terms the question: What is it?. Also notice that the first sentences all begin with the subject of the article (Hanami, Homer Simpson, and Chopsticks) followed by the verb to be (is, or are).

The first paragraph in each example gives the most basic information. What the most basic information consists of is debatable. In the Hanami example, my preference would be to end the first paragraph with “it takes place in Spring” and put all the subsequent information in a new paragraph. This would make the Hanami article more like the other two. You don’t need to read the three articles to see that the first paragraph of the Hanami article is much longer. Even among the very best articles, what is considered to be “most basic” varies. So don’t worry too much if you are not sure if something is basic or not—others can change it.

These very good articles are all quite long, but they didn’t start that way. Contributors have made thousands of changes to each article. Most articles start small like the current entry for Pharaoh.

Pharaohs were the rulers of ancient Egypt. They wore a red and white crown, which means that they ruled both Upper and Lower Egypt. The word comes from the Egyptian word Per-aa, which means “Great House”. Pharaohs were believed to be descended from the gods.

Pharaoh is also the name of a 1999 city-builder game by Impressions Games and Sierra Entertainment.

That’s the whole article. All of it.

So don’t try to write a complete entry the first time. Just get the basics out first. If you want to add sections later, you can.

After the opening paragraphs have been written, the articles get more complex. Different articles have different sections and it is difficult to make any generalisations or give specific advice about structuring the article. If you decide to add more than just the most basic information, my advice is to find the same article from the main Wikipedia site, and use that as a model for structuring the Simple English Wikipedia article.

One advantage of just writing the opening paragraphs is that you won’t need to learn how to format text.

If you decide to do more than just the opening paragraphs, then you will want to read the “How to edit” page.

There is also a “How to use images” page that covers image formatting. I want to add just one important thing on the subject of images. Don’t just copy images and use them on Wikipedia. Use your own images, if you want. Or find images that you are allowed to copy and use, like Creative Commons images.

There is a How to write Simple English articles page, but, at the time of writing, it seems to be more for native English speakers trying to write Simple English.

Finally, if you ever get stuck, want advice, or need encouragement try the “talk” page for your article. Simple English Wikipedia is a community, after all.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Writing, English, EFL, ESL, Study Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.