Welcome to the Lunyr Manual!

This manual is designed to help you edit Lunyr. It concentrates first on writing. What kind of writing does Lunyr want, and how can you learn to write that way? The first five chapters make up a seven-hour writing course. To get the benefit, you should work through the examples.

What are the principles behind the way Lunyr content is supposed to be? Chapters 6–8, on supporting material, are designed to be a quick introduction to the other aspects of the task, in its Web context. The amount of technical information is kept down, but there are some things about licensing here that you really have to know.

The final Chapter 9 wraps up the manual. In cheatsheet style, you can read some of the highlights there, and check your overall understanding.

The sections of this introduction are:

What makes a high quality reference article?

Our guidance on how to write

What else is here?

What makes a high quality reference article?

It is not so hard to list the main virtues of a reference article: it gives good coverage of a topic in accessible language. It is calm and convincing, amid any debates, and gives the right level of detail for the general reader. It is illustrated, and based on existing source material. Those things are easy to state, but it is another matter to see how such articles are constructed.

Like most writing tasks, putting together an excellent reference article on a given topic is not a matter of “one big thing” you have to get right. It is more a question of quite a number of particular skills being applied to the job.

There is also the need to recognise that the writing, although not of a kind that is really hard to master, is in a distinctive style. It has its own “register”, which is impersonal. It is well organized. It is credible, and the tone errs on the side of understatement, certainly avoiding promotional language. It is factual, and uses colorful language sparingly (but effectively). It has in common with other restricted forms that good writing comes first, fine writing a long way back in second place. While it may borrow some techniques from journalism for readability, it has a job to do that is different from relaying the news.

All that should not be intimidating. The fundamentals of researching and writing up reference material are simply a concentrated form of “looking things up” and “reporting”. They build on familiar skills. Doing a good job in this area is not mainly about self-expression, but calls on an articulate and informed approach, which is rewarding to apply.

Reference material that is clear and thorough gives the reader access to knowledge. Adding the right qualities to a draft article is mainly about building in that access, through good, concise wording that is helpful and pitched to the general reader rather than the expert. Concentrate on what the reader will appreciate.

Our guidance on how to write

This guide will break down the relevant writing skills into a few dozen points to master. There is no shortage of style guides, but this one is dedicated to a particular application. Become an “article doctor”, able to diagnose and treat all the common issues! Subedit confidently! And review your peers.

Some of the examples are quite long. One major skill is to edit down what you have, into a more concise version. You'll need to return to this point a number of times. What to take out, what to retain, and what order in which to present the content actually interlock as considerations. There is more to it than simply striking through what you think would be no loss. So concision, while fundamental to good writing, is a complex idea.

A few technical terms are introduced, not systematically but where they seem illuminating. They should be aids to understanding points that are not so often noticed in the use of spoken language. People don’t usually talk like an encyclopedia, and there are good reasons for that. If you want to write like one … well, you should be conscious of some things about language. The terms themselves are not so important, but it usually helps, if you are noticing "examples of X", to fix up X with a name.

The instructional technique used for each writing point is this: statement and discussion of the issue; examples given; proposed solutions (obviously there may be other solutions). The origin of each of the examples is also shown (for one good reason, see the discussion of plagiarism): almost all are from Lunyr, though in some cases the material was imported there. There is some commentary.

You do need to work through in order. The examples should be found cumulative, rather than representing completely separate issues: you may require techniques from earlier in the guide. By the end, you might agree that this whole writing topic is medium-sized, but reasonably coherent.

What else is here?

In Chapters 7, 8 and 9, we tie up the instructional material with the Lunyr site. Chapter 6 sets the scene, but also contrasts the objective view with the attitude of "fandom". Appreciating the difference is a big step in the right direction.

There are reasons to cover all this ground. If you have considerable experience with writing reference material, and the intellectual property and quality issues around it, well, we're pleased to meet you. You are obviously well suited to contribute. You may need only to read the two final chapters.

For everyone else, the material is covered without too much impatient rushing ahead.