User:Matilda/draft wikipedia:readability
Start to draft guideline on readability
The Simple English Wikipedia is is supposed to be used by children, who might not understand the complicated articles in the English Wikipedia, and bt other people who are still learning English.
Articles in the Simple English Wikipedia use fewer words and easier grammar than the Ordinary English Wikipedia. The Simple English Wikipedia is also for people with different needs, such as students, children, adults with learning difficulties and people who are trying to learn English.
Wikipedia:How to write Simple English articles provides some specific guidance on how to write for this wikipedia. There are some examples of how to change words to make them easier to read at Wikipedia:Examples of simpler English.
Simple English is similar to English, but it only uses basic words. A word list of basic words is at Wikipedia:Basic English combined wordlist
We suggest that articles should use only the 1000 most common and basic words in English. They should also use only simple grammar, and shorter sentences. Writers can also use a special system, for example:
- Basic English : limited vocabulary and especially simplified forms of verbs.
- Simplified English : first developed to allow engineers to write documentation about aircraft that could be easily and consistently understood by people whose first language was not English
- Special English : used by the United States radio broadcasting service Voice of America; it has a limited vocabulary (about 1500 words) and simplified grammar
For detailed writing about science, politics, or religion, articles sometimes need more words, but the English must be simple. Sometimes, an article uses more than 2000 words, or, at the most, 3000, but these articles explain all the hard words.
Hard words are those words not in the list at Wikipedia:Basic English combined wordlist.