During several years of creating, editing, publishing, and revising dictionaries and encyclopedias, I produced guidance for my team of editors on what constitutes the perfect reference article. Subsequently, as a user, I continue to consult reference resources as part of the learning process, and I find the principles of creating reference in the digital age haven’t changed the way entries should be written. Digital content doesn’t reduce the need to find things out; it just changes the navigation by which we access reference content.
Here, then, are a summary of the principles, with some examples from Wikipedia where relevant :
1. All words in the entry should be explained
The description should not contain words that are more difficult to understand than the thing being explained. This principle could be restated as “Don’t send the reader elsewhere unnecessarily”. If you need to use a technical term in a reference article, link to it, by all means, but explain it when you first use it.
Here are some examples where the rule is broken:
Cedrus libani can reach 40 m (130 ft) in height, with a assive monopodial columnar trunk up to 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) in diameter. [Wikipedia, Cedar of Lebanon article – what is “monopodial”?]
Molecular phylogeny shows that the genus is divided into Old World and New World clades [Wikipedia, entry for Oak]
2. Ensure the article is not more complicated than the intended reader’s understanding requires
In other words, don’t use terms that require the unskilled reader to have to look up. There are many examples of this being misused in the Wikipedia entry for Etruscan civilization, the introductory article :
The credibility of Dionysius of Halicarnassus is arguably bolstered by the fact that he was the first ancient writer to report the endonym of the Etruscans
linguists can infer that the base form of the word turskum is *Tursci,[38] which would, through metathesis and a word-initial epenthesis, be likely to lead to the form, E-trus-ci.
Etymology of “Etruscan”: The Tyrsenian etymology, however, remains unknown
[all taken from Wikipedia “Etruscan civilization”, accessed 13 April 2025]
What is Tyrsenian? If used at all, it should be explained here.
The justification for this principle, if justification were necessary, was provided by Pierre Bourdieu with his theory of the hidden curriculum, the implied norms and procedures in the educational system. He points out that much of the content in higher education is provided implicitly rather than explicitly, and the more information is implicit, the more of a challenge it is for an outsider to enter that world. Without being too grandiose about it, this is the democratization of knowledge.
3. Provide an onion-skin approach
The onion-skin presentation is very simple : describe the topic in the simplest possible way, ideally in a single sentence, then describe it again in more detail, and, potentially, then again in more detail still. The longer treatments can be co-located with the initial article, or held elsewhere. A good reference article goes over teh same ground repeatedly, but with a more detailed coverage each time. Readers come to a reference resource with widely differing levels of knowledge. You can’t assume what they already know, especially for an all-purpose reference work such as a general encyclopedia. In essence, the solution is to write multiple articles, and the reader can choose their own level.
Wikipedia usually does this quite well. The entry for Etruscan Civilization links to separate, more detailed entries for “Etruscan origins”, “Etruscan history”, “Etruscan language”, and so on.
By separating the introduction from the more detailed treatment, it becomes possible to provide varying levels of complexity. This means the introductory section remains the most acceptable – and I have given examples of where this is not the case in Wikipedia.
4. Don’t repeat information unnecessarily
This is a common problem with Wikipedia articles. The organisation of Wikipedia is exceptionally flat: anyone is free to make any changes to an article they wish. In effect, there are lots of workers but few managers. Contributors and editors frequently make a change without looking at the bigger picture. considering the more difficult challenge of ensuring that the resulting article remains balanced and does not repeat the same information elsewhere.
5. Don’t make it too long
With reference, brevity is an advantage. In principle, the shorter the resource, the more useful. Unfortunately, the enthusiasm of the contributor means that many entries are far too long to be useful as reference. Instead, the article becomes its own primary research, or opinion piece. The Wikipedia article for Trump’s first presidency, with 24,000 words and 916 citations, is an example. I note that the Wikipedia editors have flagged this entry as “too long to read and navigate comfortably”. The problem is that volunteer contributors want to make their point, not edit an article down.
One good way to manage the problem of duplication is to have template entries for different subject areas, with indicative word lengths. This enables comparative articles, such as US presidents, to have similar-length articles.
6. Don’t link to primary research
I have explained the reason for this in a separate post. Wikipedia states in its guidance to editors “No original research”, but this point is rather different. It is the tendency of editors to move the encyclopedia to a level of currency that is not appropriate, or sustainable, for most readers. If you write about what was investigated yesterday, you have to update it again tomorrow. If you draw on text that was published in current scholarly sources, you have a lot of explaining to do, more, in my opinion, than it appropriate. It’s not an encyclopedia’s job to log all current research.
7. Don’t link to firewalled content
It is elitist to provide a reference article that links to firewalled content. Just because the editor was able to access firewalled content does not make that content available to everyone.
8. Check you are making things easier for the reader, not more difficult
After compiling the article, read it again: Have we left any obstacles in the way of understanding? Access to knowledge is a right for all, and it is one of the fundamental components of accessibility for all readers
Why is all this important?
Without sounding too pompous, we are dealing with nothing less than making knowledge accessible and inclusive. The true democratization of knowledge is a long, slow progress, and even today it is not yet completed. Although many of its principles became apparent through Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopedia, we cannot say even today that information is equally accessible. It is remarkable that Diderot, back in the 18th century, talked about accessibility, in his entry for “Encyclopedia”: “The more abstract the subject, the more we must strive to make it accessible to all readers [Plus les matières seront abstraites, plus il faudra s’efforcer de les mettre à la portée de tous les lecteurs].
Acknowledgement: Thanks to Sidney Landau’s textbook on Dictionaries for his useful thoughts on how to write a dictionary definition.
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