Talk:Edward Kennard Rand

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 * Here is a more accessible source for the above DYK: Rutgers University: Rand, Edward Kennard GuardianH (talk) 04:13, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Encyclopedic prose
Hey Amakuru, I've noticed your recent edits to the sentence regarding Rand's visit to Eliot, and the change to an encyclopedic prose. I'm not sure what exactly is meant by encyclopedic prose, but, respectfully, I think that some style has been lost in changing the sentence and that the original sentence ( "To the bewildered president, Rand asked, "I would like to go to Harvard; do you have any money?" Amused, Elliot, upon hearing his request..." ) was fine — it did not contain any WP:ORIGINAL as it reflected the language used in the source.

I think there may be a way to compromise without having to directly quote Berrigan's report. I think some wiggle-room in style is allowed, especially since I don't think the article is too different in writing like that seen in, for example, Learned Hand or Calvin Coolidge. What do you think about this:

"To the "bemused" president, Rand asked, "I would like to go to Harvard; do you have any money?" Upon hearing his request, Eliot personally saw to Rand's admission into Harvard College, where he...." — GuardianH (talk) 07:32, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
 * morning, and thanks for your note. What I'm talking about is WP:TONE, which discusses how articles on Wikipedia should be written in a formal encyclopedic tone. Looking at the sentence "To the bewildered president, Rand asked "I would like to go...", with respect it doesn't seem to be written in that sort of formal tone. The usual word order of subject–verb–object has been flipped, so it sounds more like Yoda talking than an encyclopaedia, and while that would be suitable for a newspaper or a jokey column on a website, I don't feel it belongs here. I'd also be concerned about saying in WP:WIKIVOICE or without attribution that the president was "bewildered" or "bemused". We don't have enough reliable sources attesting to his state of mind to be able to make that assertion, hence why I restructured it as an attributed quote, which gets the same point across while maintaining an encyclopedic tone. What is it you don't like about the new formulation? It makes it clear what happened and the reader can make their own conclusions based on the evidence. Cheers &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 09:14, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
 * What I dislike about the new forumlation is that, by directly mentioning the source, it disrupts the flow of the passage. I can give an example of what exactly I mean by this. Take this sentence from Learned Hand for example:
 * "Hand possessed a gift for the English language, and his writings are admired as legal literature."
 * Now, if we 'encyclopedize' it:
 * "The historian Marvin Schick has written that multiple scholars praised Hand for his gift for the English language, and that his writings are admired as legal literature."
 * By 'encyclopedizing' it, flow and brevity are lost in the passage. If you would like the reader to make their own conclusions, it would be best for them to merely hover their cursor over the citation where they can see it for themselves, rather than having to sacrifice some smoothness of the article by explicitly quoting it. That's why I think we can compromise with the proposal I made above. GuardianH (talk) 16:16, 6 October 2022 (UTC)