Wikipedia:WikiProject Palaeontology/Writing tips

How to become a proficient writer

Proficient writing is a valuable skill. Writing Wikipedia articles is an opportunity to acquire it, as it can give you practise and feedback in the form of reviews and copy edits from other editors. Here is how to make it happen:

1. Make improving your writing skills a primary goal. You are unlikely to improve quickly if you don't actively try to make every of your articles better than the previous one.
2. Read articles of others, particularly recently promoted FAs. Pay attention to the way they formulate, and try to apply it to your own writings.
3. Copy-edit your own text at least once, and re-formulate sentences you are not happy with. The learning effect will be higher.
4. If somebody copy-edited your text, carefully review the suggested changes and implement what you've learned in your next article.
5. List your article in our Article workshop, and, afterwards, possibly at WP:GAN or, once you reached a higher level, even at WP:FAC. This should attract reviewers and copy-editors from which you can learn. You can also list your article at the Guild of Copy Editors

General advice

1. Start with relatively short articles on specialised topics. Short articles tend to get reviews more quickly. Reviewing for others can also reduce waiting time.
2. Write short and simple sentences. They can be easily combined to longer ones later.
3. Don't simply include all the information you can find in the article. Instead, explain what you think the reader should know about the topic. See also WP:INDISCRIMINATE.
4. Optional: Whenever you are unsure about a sentence, it can help to check with a modern grammar/writing tool such as DeepL Write, which often provides good suggestions. This can be especially useful for non-native speakers.

Common writing mistakes

1. Don't use different terms for the same thing. If you use a different term, the reader has to assume that you are referring to a different thing. Clarity is more important than varied writing. Examples:
   1. multiple large tooth crowns extending from a connected root, known as a tooth whorl […] the lower symphyseal whorl tooth whorl
2. Avoid ambiguities. Examples:
   1. The Amargosa River is part of Devil Hole. It is at an elevation of 730 m above sea level. – The "It" is ambiguous here; it technically refers to the river but in fact was intended to refer to Devil Hole.
   2. More examples here.
3. Avoid repetitions, redundancies, and other fluff; formulate as concisely as possible. Examples:
   1. He also gave mentions to the postcranial fossils of the genus and listed a newly recognized species named Palaeotherium minus. ⇒ He also erected a third species, P. minus, based on postcranial material.
   2. Not long after in the same year, he changed his mind and thought that the fossil mammal instead would have been within the order of pachyderms, theorizing that it would have been closest to tapirs and that it would have had trunks like them ⇒ Later in the same year, he instead suggested that the fossils belonged to a pachyderm that was most closely related to tapirs and had trunks like them.
   3. Based on the fossil bird remains, which includes the fossils of a variety of animals highly associated with water ⇒ Based on the occurrence of birds that are associated with water
   4. More examples here.

Make articles understandable

While we strive to be a serious reference work, we do not primarily write for an expert audience (see WP:MTAU for general advice):

1. Avoid technical terms when you can do so without oversimplifying the topic. You may still link the text to the technical article in question. Examples:
   1. Abdomen growth in males and juvenile females is isometric with carapace width ⇒ Abdomen size in males and juvenile females grows in direct proportion to carapace width.
   2. But don't oversimplify. If terms are important and reduce ambiguity, mention them (e.g., fourth trochanter should generally be spelled out with a brief explanation). Whether or not terms such as anterior (front), posterior (rear), lateral (sidewards), medial (inside), cervical (neck), dorsal (back), sacral (hip), or caudal (tail) are to be replaced should be decided on a case-by-case basis. The use of a technical term can make sense when the article makes heavy use of it. The goal is to reduce technical language as much as possible without sacrificing clarity and precision.
2. Always wikilink terms or concepts at first mention. Only link a term once, although it can make sense to link it again in a different section (see MOS:DUPLINK). In dinosaur articles, you may link anatomical terms to the Glossary of dinosaur anatomy using {{Dinogloss|term}}. Examples:
   1. it grows in direct proportion to carapace width
   2. the teeth were of different types
   3. Gilmore published a preliminary description naming the new genus
   4. the layer is around 3 m thick
3. Add an explanatory gloss where possible without overloading the text, and provide hints about the meaning of terms (e.g., the addition of "bone" to make clear that a term refers to a particular bone). Examples:
   1. a foramen (small opening) piercing the roof of the braincase; the flattened anterior (front) surface of the basioccipital bone; and the trigeminal foramen (the opening for the trigeminal nerve) piercing both the prootic and laterosphenoid bones.
4. Provide context that allows the reader to appreciate why a particular information matters. A good text should allow for a deeper understanding of the topic instead of just providing data. Examples:
   1. the femur has a prominent ridge ⇒ the fourth trochanter, a ridge on the femur where leg muscles attach, is unusually prominent in this species
5. Avoid technical jargon that may be irritating/confusing for the general reader. All of the conventions listed below have been repeatedly requested by non-expert reviewers at WP:FAC.
   1. et al. ⇒ and colleagues. This clearly makes the article more inviting for the general reader, but note that some authors prefer to use "et al.", which is still acceptable. Note that "et al." is preferable in taxonboxes and lists.
   2. referred to ⇒ assigned to. (e.g., when indicating that a specimen was assigned to a particular taxon)
   3. Dodson (1998) argued that ⇒ In 1998, Dodson argued that or Peter Dodson, in a 1998 paper, argued that or similar.

Structure

1. In highly technical sections (e.g., "Description"), provide the most basic and/or easiest to understand information first, and discuss the details later.
2. It is often best to present information in chronological order (the order in which the different publications have been published).
3. Provide historical information in the section where it is most relevant: Taxonomical history in the "Taxonomy" section (also named "Discovery" or "Research history"), classification history in "Systematics", and palaeobiological interpretations in "Palaeobiology".
4. Try to make the text flow. The succession of information should be logical. Avoid paragraphs that are too long, and insert additional subheadings where needed.

While the subject matter of some articles will necessitate the creation of a unique article structure, most paleontology-related articles will either be articles about extinct organisms or geologic formations. Best-practices for structuring these articles are shown below, although not every article on these subjects will require all of these topics to be given an entire section, and some articles may be short or unusual enough that one or more sections can be merged. These are only rough guidelines, and many articles can and will differ from these exact structures.

For articles about extinct organisms or clades

• Discovery and naming: This section generally includes information about who discovered the first fossils, what the scientific name of this taxon means, and any other notable leaps or changes in the scientific understanding of the article's subject.
• Description: This section will often be the most technical and will contain the most scientific jargon. It will contain details about the anatomy and distinguishing features of the article's subject.
• Classification: This section will contain a synopsis of where the article's subject belongs in the tree of life, including its evolutionary relationships and any scientific uncertainty surrounding those relationships.
• Paleobiology: This section will contain any research done on the subject's physiology, behavior, ontogeny, pathologies, and/or any other relevant biological concepts.
• Paleoecology: This section will contain any relevant information about the environment in which the subject was found. This can include its dietary ecology, the animals and plants it shared its environment with, and any known weather phenomena it may have experienced.

For articles about geologic formations or specific fossil sites

• Research history: This will include details about how and when the subject of the article was first discovered or identified, which scientists have done research on the subject, and any relevant or notable discoveries that changed how much or in what way the subject was studied by scientists.
• Geologic history: This section should contain any background information about geological events involving the subject, its paleogeography, its composition and structure, and the subject's relationship to other geologic formations.
• Stratigraphy: This section will contain mostly information about how the subject is subdivided into sections by geologists, how its age was determined (if applicable), as well as discussions of the depositional environment and climate when this geologic formation was formed.
• Fossil content: Fossils are obviously the primary means of conducting paleontology, and so the fossil content of a geologic formation should include any and all notable fossils, including trace fossils that have been found within it. This section may also contain discussion of specific locations within the formation which may be of individual relevance.
• Geography: This section is the most broad, and may contain information about where the formation is located, its economic uses to humans, any cultural significance it may have to local cultures, or anything else that could concievably be notable.

Make your editor's life easier

Formatting and referencing can be quite daunting. Here are some tips:

1. Use Citer Tool to generate citations from DOIs, ISBNs, and URLs. The autocompletion feature of the editor has similar functionality (see WP:INTREF3).
2. Unit conversions are not required for science articles per MOS:CVT. They can, however, easily be added using the cvt template. For example, {{cvt|5|kg}} returns "5 kg (11 lb)" and {{cvt|10|to|15|cm}} returns "10 to 15 cm (3.9 to 5.9 in)".
3. There are templates that provide the dates of ages and epochs in the format "million years ago":
   1. {{Period start|Triassic}} gives "251.902"
   2. {{Period end|Triassic}} gives "201.4".
   3. {{period span/brief|Silurian|Cretaceous}} gives "443 to 66 million years ago".
   4. {{period span/brief|Maastrichtian}} gives "72 to 66 million years ago".
   5. {{ma|Maastrichtian|Danian}} gives "72.2 to 66 million years ago".
   6. {{ma|Danian|million years old}} gives "66 million years old".
   7. {{ma|Triassic|error=5|round=2}} gives "251.9 ± 5 million years ago".
   8. between {{Ma|525|and}} {{Ma|520}} gives "between 525 and 520 million years ago".
4. There are some useful tools that can easily be activated:
   1. RefRenamer can rename references to a standard format. Several palaeo editors prefer the format author+year (e.g., "benton2004"), which makes it easy to reuse references in other parts of the article. The script will remember your settings.
   2. Reference Organizer allows you to move all references to the bottom of the article. This greatly improves readability of the wikitext.
   3. There are scripts to highlight duplicate wikilinks and duplicate references.