Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Writing a B-Class article

There are often questions about the difference between a B class article, a start class and a stub. Coordinators encourage editors to bring articles from stub and start to B list.

A stub has the basic information. It’s close to a one or two sentence summary of an event, person, thing. A Start class article has more information, and it might even have an info box. But it lacks some key elements that make it useful to readers. So what is the impetus for having a B class article? First of all, you get more points on the monthly article writing contest. But beyond that, it’s simply this: you’ve provided your reader with more information; the information you’ve provided is factual and verifiable; it’s well enough written to hold their interest; and it has some graphics, diagrams and or an info box.

Coverage
The article reasonably covers the topic. It doesn’t have to be a treatise on the subject: you're not expected to write a dissertation, but the article should contain enough information to place the topic in context. For example, if you’re writing about General Who, you'll include information on the general’s background, on his education, his experience and, importantly, the so what. That last point covers Notability. If a person, place, event, thing, idea&mdash;whatever!&mdash;isn't notable, we don't include it. For more information on that, you best read Notability.

Too much information
Is there such a thing? Probably. You don’t have to rewrite the encyclopedia. On the other hand, it's important to link to other articles, and for other articles to link back to the one you're working on. So, this is where we might also look for links to related subjects. For example, if you’re writing about a general in World War I, you might want to link to an article on World War I. If that general went to Sandhurst or West Point, you might link to those academies. If he or she served in a particular unit, or at a particular battle, you could link to that. Here is an example: "Everything went according to the French plan, at least for six weeks. On 4 June 1796, 11,000 soldiers of the Army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, commanded by François Lefebvre, pushed back a 6,500-man Austrian force at Altenkirchen. On 6 June, the French placed Ehrenbreitstein fortress under siege. At Wetzlar on the Lahn, Lefebvre ran into Charles' concentration of 36,000 Austrians on 15 June. Casualties were light on both sides, but Jourdan pulled back to Niewied while Kléber retreated toward Düsseldorf. Pál Kray, commanding 30,000, rushed into battle with Kléber's 24,000 at Uckerath, east of Bonn on 19 June." This paragraph is taken from the middle of an article Battle of Kehl (1796). Some of the material isn't linked to anything in this example, because it's already linked earlier: Lefebvre, for example, and Charles', Jourdan, and Kléber were mentioned earlier. They didn't need to be linked again. But by linking Altenkirchen and Wetzlar, the reader knows to go there to read more information.

Structure
The structure of your article is important. We usually divide articles into at least 4 parts: a lead summarizes the notability (notoriety) of a subject. This might be the original stub. The lead is followed by at least three more sections, first being the content, second being sources and citations, and the last being the categories. Content is important here. B class articles covers specific subject reasonably. You can use interwiki links to lead your reader to other subjects that you don’t want to cover in depth, and you can go to other articles and link to your subject as well.

You use the template to collect your sources and citations automatically at the end of the article. The fourth “must” is a list of categories. We include this so that other people can find the article not just by searching on the name, but also by its cluster in the general “library” of knowledge.

B4 It is free from major grammatical errors. Okay, not all of us are literary geniuses. But try to get it close to right. Your first reviewer—the person who is assessing your article—isn’t going to fix your grammatical mistakes. That’s not his or her job. It’s yours. If you need help, ask. Make sure you have the correct punctuation, your names are spelled consistently, and your words are spelled right.

B5 The article must have appropriate supporting materials. This includes some kind of info box. There is a list of them here. You should also have images (such as a picture of your subject, a map of a battlefield, etc). A battle field needs a location, so that should be a map reference.

It’s important to bring articles to B class from stub and/or start.