User talk:Wilber Reyes01/sandbox

Expressing numbers in an article

Hi Wilber Reyes01. I'm providing support for your course and I had some quick comments on your draft.

• There are a number of passages like " Of the total population 33,182 (72.4%) are not Hispanic or Latino" or "21,116 males (46.1%) and 24,713 females (53.9%)". In cases like these, you want to express an accurate and meaningful number to the reader. If we've already established the current population then we can talk about groups in terms of proportions and percents. We can also use absolute numbers if it is helpful, but not both for the same figure. The result can make the text hard to read and make it difficult to draw quick comparisons.
• Likewise, if you're using the ACS as a reference, you can refer to it in text once--as you do in the second sentence--and use it in references afterwards. So long as the source is still clear to the reader, we probably don't need to mention it in the text again for that paragraph.
• More broadly, think about the sorts of information a reader might want from an encyclopedia and what they could get from clicking through to a source. We want to show the broad demographic characteristics of a neighborhood, but a breakdown of language use by age might be best left to a source. We should still talk about language use, just try to use the overall breakdowns in the text.

If you have any questions about this or need a hand please let me know. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:20, 7 April 2015 (UTC)