Help:Style Guide

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Language of SurveyWiki

SurveyWiki is designed to be used internationally by people from a variety of cultures and language backgrounds. In order to aid communication on SurveyWiki, the administrators have chosen English as the main medium of communication.

Use of Other Languages

Members are free to translate articles into other languages. Members should not write new articles in languages other than English. In other words, if you want an article in, say, French, write it in English first and then create a French page. Link both translations to each other. Pages which appear in languages other than English and have no link to an English translation page will be removed and the author encouraged to provide an English version before the original non-English page is returned to the wiki.

Style of English

All styles of English are welcome on SurveyWiki and members are encouraged to write in any style of English which they feel comfortable with. Editing pages to change one style of English to another will be noted and the editor contacted privately. We allow editing of style only where the original author's English is ambiguous or unclear in some way. This is in keeping with the priority of encouraging editing only for the purpose of adding content. Remember that if you do edit a page, you are requested to comment as to why you have edited it and what you have changed using the Summary box below the edit window or by commenting on the Discussion tab of the page.

We recommend that when you write, you aim to REACH the reader by making your writing

  • Readable: something that the reader finds easy to understand and follow
  • Engaging: something that interests the reader
  • Appropriate: make your writing on topic and relevant
  • Clear: use headings and paragraphs to direct readers
  • Helpful: provide links to other pages or external sources, include images, etc.

Bibliographic & Other Referencing

SurveyWiki uses APA style for referencing. Below are examples of a journal article and a book title in APA style:

Agheyisi, R., & Fishman, J. A. (1970). Language Attitude Studies: A brief survey of methodological approaches. Anthropological Linguistics 12:5 , 137-157.

Chomsky, N. (2002). Syntactic Structures (2nd Edition ed.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

For more help with APA style, there's a good guide on the Perdue University website.