The Edited Guide, also known as the EG, is a collection of factual Entries on h2g2 chosen by you via Peer Review. Most of these Entries are good and some are excellent, but they’re all assessed against narrow criteria. There’s an official set of Guidelines, explaining these criteria to would-be writers. This is an Alternative set of EG Guidelines. Just maybe, it contains the things that the first Guideliner forgot . This time, too, the Guidelines are as much for the Reviewers as they are for the Writers

For more detail, carry on reading through this Entry - but for the moment, here's a quick list:

• They were right about reality
• Be entertaining
• Colour between the lines
• Plan your Entry, but don’t overplan it
• Write about what other people might be interested in
• Research your Entry thoroughly, and their Entry even more thoroughly
• Be instructed, informed and truthful
• Write in your own style rather than that of any other Researcher, except possibly Douglas Adams
• Try to make your Entry buoyant
• Don't try too hard to be serious
• Write Entries of appropriate depth
• Writers about subjects can be certified
• Avoid reading in the first person
• Try to read past the spelling and grammar
• Plagiarism is despicable

They were Right About Reality

The Edited Guide is a real-life guide to life, the universe and everything. We’ve collectively agreed that it’is not a place for fiction, however. Please respect this principle of our site. Feel free to write fiction, but please don't put it in Peer Review (PR). If you’d like criticism of your fictional writing, try the Alternative Writing Workshop (AWW) . If you think it’s ready to read, the AWW is still good, but don’t forget the Post.

This does not mean, though, that you should switch off your imagination. The official Guidelines disallow dramatised accounts of real events, but this alternative set never would. The official Guidelines fuss about the risk of making straightforward factual writing confusing and obscure. Well, let’s embrace the risk, because if you really love writing, straightforwardness is only ever for the first draft.

More generally, imagination is the essence of good writing. If you set out primarily to relate facts as clearly as possible, you will not excite your readers. You might aspire to inform them, sure, but remember that you’re contributing to a guide here, not to an encyclopedia. The Guide will never be comprehensive enough to be a useful work of general reference, and so we needn’t adhere to the other conventions of that kind of writing, those of cold clarity and conciseness. Try another approach. Cherish your reader, and try to please them, surprise them and stimulate them. Aim to find a new formula every time you write. If you’re reviewing rather than writing, expect these delights rather than demanding turgid conformity. Someone is trying to seduce you. Don’t you dare be frigid, whatever you do.

Be Entertaining

The official Guidelines say ‘Be Original’ at this point. Nothing wrong with that, except that it isn’t the second most important thing about writing for the Edited Guide. Rather than dutifully checking that nobody has written on your chosen subject (it won’t work anyway. The search engine is rubbish), just make sure that your writing is so entertaining and distinctive that it’ll be picked anyway.

Being entertaining isn’t as hard as you might think. The secret is to read what you’re writing, and make sure it says what you meant it to. There is a good Entry in there somewhere, of course, because you’ve already seen it in your mind’s eye. All that’s left is getting it onto the page in a form as good as you know it can be. Those nice people in Peer Review will help you to achieve this, or at least that’s the theory. If any of them choose to hinder you instead, you are strongly encouraged to howl with disgust and ridicule the silly individual.

Colour between the Lines

We need a feasible and useful alternative to the rather dispiriting challenge of filling in the gaps (don’t judge the hapless author of the official Guidelines too harshly, by the way. He hadn’t yet been steam-rolled by Wikipedia when he dreamed of a gapless Guide). Colouring between the lines is a nicer analogy. The Guide certainly needs colour, but at the same time a measure of discipline is called for. Please don’t just scribble. Not that keeping between the lines is an absolute necessity in a virtual world. We even have a Researcher who can colour in a different dimension.[needs link to tr/Waz cartoon]

The official Guidelines’ suggestions about places to get started are pretty good, however, and so you can indeed browse through suggestions made by the h2g2 Community at the Challenge h2g2 forum. Another good source of inspiration is the Flea Market where you'll find Entries that need finishing off, as well as many needing little more than a kinder Peer Review treatment.

Plan Your Entry, but don’t Overplan It

Plan your Entry, and think carefully about its structure. If your Entry is planned with care, it’s more likely to realise its potential, because you’ll consider all of its possibilities. You might decide , for example, that it should flow simply and be divided neatly into sections. Just as valid though, you might choose to make it dance all over the place, as with the following beautiful Entries.

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Don’t forget that it’s possible to overplan. You can make Entries too elaborate, and worse still you can make them stale. Always remember that in active PR thread, there are several plans for your Entry in play. If you try to accommodate all of them, you’ll almost certainly create a monster. Be selective about the advice you follow (and for that matter, that you offer). You’re not obliged to conform to criticism, though do please acknowledge all of it politely. You wrote the Entry, remember, and that makes it yours. Some of the Reviewers are kind and clever, but they’re still only secondary in this process. The creator is King, and your judgement is law. All they can do is refuse to pick you, and sometimes, my friend, that’s a godsend.

Write about what other people might be interested in

There’s an element of truth in the idea that people write best on subjects close to their hearts, but it’s not a universal truth. We’ve all met bores holding forth interminably on their dreary pet subject. More true, of course, is the contention that people write best on subjects we’d like to read about. Here’s a radical idea, then. If there’s a writer you particularly admire, why not ask them if they’ll write for you on a subject of your choice? You can collaborate or you can commission, either is cool. If you’re a writer and nobody’s coming forward with requests, don’t be deterred: try to anticipate the subjects that will draw attention. When your starting premise is the lure of the subject, you’ll be amazed how skilfully you can lay the bait. You’ll also find that there are far more of these topics to write about, with far more variety, than in the ‘stick-to-stuff-you-know’ formula. Here are some examples of compelling subjects that the author surely had no first-hand experience of:

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Research your Entry thoroughly, and their Entry even more thoroughly

It says in those other Guidelines that the starting point for many Entries is often passion or curiosity for a subject. Entries should not be short on facts or detail, and you should do your research. It's often clear when Researchers' entries are true labours of love. Well, Amen to that. But before we revel in some examples of exemplary research, please take a moment to think about the Reviewer’s obligations in the same area. You shouldn’t be commenting on the content of an Entry unless you fulfil the same knowledge requirements that you demand of the author. Whether that’s by experience or through your own research doesn’t matter – provided your competence measures up. And don’t get on your high-horse if the author asks to be shown your credentials. In every worthwhile writing community, the burden of proof bears equally on writer and reviewer. Since the other guy did all the work, the least you can do is to contribute the humility.

Here we go, then. Some research par excellence:

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Be instructed, informed and truthful

The poor guy who was given the job of writing the original Guidelines was really struggling by this point, and so he made the worthy but utterly ridiculous statement that ‘Edited Entries will essentially be instructive, informative and factual in varying proportions’. He then appended the memorable phrase: ‘This is important’, presumably because he couldn’t believe what he’d just written. This isn’t to say that none of us should instruct, just that most of us shouldn’t. Informing is a little more acceptable, but instructing is definitely tending towards the prescriptive. Those who can’t teach, and those who can’t teach think they can teach. The ‘factual’ exhortation is the most valid one here, but it’s secondary, for Heaven’s sake. If you make something factual as an absolute priority, it will not be fun.

That’s why the Alternative Guidelines turn this round, and emphasise what writing , reviewing or reading an Entry can do for you. You will be instructed (unless you use Wiki as a source, of course) . You will be informed. There is a proviso for the achievement of this learning experience, though: you must be truthful. Everything that appears as material fact on this (or any) site should be true. Heed the word ‘material’, though. It is not good criticism to object to a description of Napoleon’s discomfort in St Helena’s climate on the grounds that the sky is not always blue in Corsica.

Write in your own style rather than that of any other Researcher, except possibly Douglas Adams

OK, so that was a little tetchy, but the original Guidelines’ presumption that anyone writing homage to DNA will inevitably fall flat is more than a little arrogant. If you don’t know the UnderGuide, try its Archives for some utterly brilliant writing, proving just how good the finest in our community are. Anyway, the original Guidelines declaration in this section is spot on: ‘write in your own words, in a style that you're comfortable with’. The tragedy is that a few persistent pedants in PR insist on a non-existent house style. To show just how wrong they are, each of the following entries has a completely different style, making the Guide a varied and fascinating place to be.

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Try to make your Entry Buoyant

Good writing flies, hence the header above. The original word was ‘balance’, though, and that’s important too. Opinion-pieces can be accepted in the edited Guide, or at least they will be come the Glorious Day, provided that they are moderate and consider all viewpoints fairly. The political essay is one of the most venerable forms of journalism, and the BBC should be helping us practice it. Do show restraint with contentious topics, however. Remember that in recent times the Beeb’s indiscretions have left public servants gyrating among the trees, to say nothing of the wilful misnaming of kittens.

Writing that flies is maybe less controversial, though it too can be deliciously dangerous. Here are some examples, at different altitudes and proximities to the sound barrier:

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Don't Try Too Hard to be Serious

If you don’t smile now and then as you tap away, you probably shouldn’t have written it. If you don’t smile now and then as you review the Entry, you most definitely shouldn’t be criticising it.

Write Entries of appropriate depth

Poor old original-Guidelines-guy was so far gone by now that he decided length is more important than depth. Well, let me tell you that the only person who knows how long a piece is before it’s written is a (expletive deleted) journalist, and that’s the lowest form of writing. It really is worth considering how deep a piece should be, however. Masterful pieces can be light or profound, just as they can be long or short. In some particularly clever examples, the writing style echoes the subject-matter of the piece. Here are some Entries that show the range of depth and narrative style that can work well within the Edited Guide:

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Writers about subjects can be certified

He’d lost it completely by now. They carried him out, foaming at the mouth, just after he’d asserted that Edited Entries need to be verifiable. This is not only completely impractical: it’s also specious. One one occasion, for example, a Slant (semi-officially the second-worst of all time) refused to accept the veracity of a particular fact even after having it pointed out in the judicial record.

In practice, we have to trust writers to be truthful on material facts, and we have to judge cases of immaterial facts on their merits. It often comes down to the dramatised Entry issue . At some level, every worthwhile Entry is in some measure dramatised and/or speculative. Not everything has to go into the Edited Guide, and not everything should, but an implacable rejection of every imaginative piece offered will eventually stultify the Edited Guide by ensuring that the best writers shun it – and potentially also h2g2 itself.

Avoid Reading in the First Person

Did I mention that Reviewers should be humble? Well, I think I’d better say it again, because so many of the PR denizens are rampant egomaniacs. I personally find this incredible, when you all have so much to be humble about. The guy who wrote the piece is worth ten of you, and don’t you forget it.

When you write, of course, the boot’s on the other foot. Aim to write as much as you criticise, at least with a roughly equal word-count and preferably at ten words written for each one of crit. The use of a smiley in your PR-post is charged at a hundred words of proper writing, by the way.

Note too what it says in the official Guidelines in this section: ‘there are certain topics that do benefit from being told in the first person’. The unconditional rejection of first-person Entries is based on a complete misinterpretation of what the Guidelines actually say. If you must do your editing with a checklist, at least read the damned thing properly.

Try to read past the spelling and grammar

Someone has to correct spelling and grammar sooner or later, and it’s best done while still in PR by the original author rather than loading it on the poor old Sub-Ed. If you look at the PR contributions of seasoned and considerate Reviewers, though, you’ll see that they always address content issues first and make sure that the Entry is somewhere close to EG-fitness before starting on details of language usage. If you have nothing to say about a piece other than a correction of punctuation, then don’t be surprised if your intervention is unwelcome. Nonetheless, it’s worth restating the virtues of GuideML correctness. You can also find a bunch of useful tips in our entry on English Usage in the Edited Guide. If you're not sure about a spelling, it's ostensibly worth checking on our Spell Checker, though none of us believe that it’s manned any more.

Linking to h2g2 Entries

When linking from an entry you are approving to other h2g2 entries, there are a couple of points to bear in mind:

• The entries linked to should also be in the Edited Guide, or at least in places where alteration of the linked piece is not possible outside the Towers. This should be the case for UnderGuide Entries, for example, though the precedent is still untried. It might also be the case for certain older Entries, where Elvis status can be taken as permanent.

• They should be direct and relevant. For example, the word 'poetry' should link to Poetry, rather than Poetry Events and Gigs in Glasgow, which, though a laudable entry, does not define the word 'poetry'.

Plagiarism is despicable

This is the one area where the original Guidelines are too soft. When we sign up to h2g2, we all agree to the BBC Terms and Conditions, which include a whole section on not infringing other people's copyright. This means that there is no excuse for ignorance about plagiarism. It’s not necessary to go on about criminality and all those other threats. The fact of the matter is that passing off someone else’s work as your own is contemptible. We do not want people who do it on our site, and it’s the one time when scathing invective by reviewers is appropriate. Let’s hound the b*st*rds out of here.

You can find more information about this in the Entry on Intellectual Property Law.

Other Useful Information

The following Entries might also be of interest:

• Learning to Write on h2g2
• English Usage in the Edited Guide
• Using Approved GuideML in the Edited Guide
• Peer Review
• The Collaborative Writing Workshop
• The h2g2 Writing Workshop
• What Happens after your Entry has been Recommended?
• Speaker's Corner
• Another Galaxy Guide
• The GuideML Clinic

A last word from the old creed: ‘Thanks again for all your hard work - and remember, even if your Entry is not edited, it will still be a part of the Guide and will show up in the search engine (at least insofar as anything does). One of our guiding principles is that we never throw anything away - you never know when it might come in handy!’

If that isn’t an invitation to try out a few old near-misses again, I don’t know what is. Times are thin, and the Edited Guide can’t afford to be so high-handed and picky these days. The Guidelines will probably endure. At most there’ll be minor changes. The pedantic administration of them will soon be a thing of the past, though. When the crunch comes, don’t gloat and don’t scoff at the reactionaries. They’ll be hurt, because most if not all of them care about h2g2 at least as deeply as you do. Be kind, bring them round, and let’s go forward together into a Golden Age of the Edited Guide and of Quality Writing.