Manual of Style

When reading through the manual of style for wikitravel, I have to say I was a bit overwhelmed. As I have said many times before, I am completely computer illiterate, so using different formatting techniques is jibberish. It's hard to read something like how to link pages and actually picture the outcome. My brain works in those ways for certain aspects in my life, but certainly not for computer use.

What I found to be the most useful tips in the manual of style all came from th section of writing style. I think this was especially useful for me because I have always found myself with a certain style when I write. However, writing for something like wikitravel requires a much different tone and writing style all together.

When I was doing my wikitravel, I found myself using very descriptive words which made me give off a biased tone, as if I were advertising for the town. As one of the style rules in the manual, it mentions that it is extremely important to avoid doing this. They point out that in your writing you should simply provide useful information to the reader that will allow them to make a decision on their own. After reading this, a lot of my writing definitely needed to be altered.

I also found that "Words to Avoid" section to be extremely important. In this part, wikitravel gave a large list of words that definitely need to be eliminated from the writing. Many of these words were actually things that I found in my own wikitravel page when I was describing a restaurant or hotel. I felt as if I was becoming more of a travel guide than a source for information.

It seems, for me anyway, that the most useful section in the manual of style was the part about determining your tone accordingly. They say that writing should be fair. However, they also mention that this does not mean that your writing needs to be boring. Also, they hope that you can find a conversational and informal tone. In this section, it says that you should not be afraid to write with a humorous tone as well, as this makes the writing more interesting for readers. Also, you should never assume that your readers are idiots. Originally I thought that anytime there was a word or place that was out of the ordinary, then I should go into depth about it. However, after reading this, I really changed my attitude realizing that people probably know more than I was giving them credit for.

Writing for wikitravel seems pretty complicated. There are so many guidelines to follow in order make a suitable page. It actually reminds me of writing for a newspaper. There are so many style guidelines to reference in the Associated Press handbook, that it often feels like you are focusing more on the style opposed to the actual writing.