Welcome edit

Hello, Willysinclaire and welcome to Wikipedia! It appears you are participating in a class project. If you haven't done so already, we encourage you to go through our training for students. Go through our online training for students

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We hope you like it here and encourage you to stay even after your assignment is finished! TJH2018 talk 16:42, 30 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Welcome! edit

Hello, Willysinclaire, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Ian and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

I hope you enjoy editing here. If you haven't already done so, please check out the student training library, which introduces you to editing and Wikipedia's core principles. You may also want to check out the Teahouse, a community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to helping new users. Below are some resources to help you get started editing.

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  • You can find answers to many student questions on our Q&A site, ask.wikiedu.org

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:15, 30 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Feedback edit

Hi. I noticed that your addition to the recombinant DNA article was reverted. I just wanted to give you a few pointers to think about when writing for the encyclopaedia

  • As Jytdog mentioned, "we" is a red flag in this sort of writing. Encyclopaedia writing shouldn't use the first or second person. It's about collecting information, not about speaking to your reader. This is especially true in Wikipedia's case, where there dozens of people collaborate on articles over a long period to time. If you find yourself using "I", "we", or "you", it's a good sign that you may be on the wrong track in terms of tone.
  • The other issue with what you wrote is that you're writing in a step-by-step fashion. On one hand, this is problematic because Wikipedia isn't supposed to be a "how to" resource (see WP:NOTMANUAL). But from a different perspective this is problematic because you're telling a story. In an encyclopaedia article, you start at the end: if you're writing about recombinant proteins, say something along the lines of "recombinant proteins are [x] and are used for [y]". Once you establish what they are and why they're important, then you might want to describe how they're used. But not in a "how this was done" style of writing.

I hope this is helpful. If you have further questions, don't hesitate to get in touch. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:18, 12 May 2016 (UTC)Reply