Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words

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This page documents an English Wikipedia style guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should follow, though it should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcuts: WP:AWW WP:WEASEL

This page in a nutshell: Avoid using fuzzy, estimated statistics and hearsay evidence such as "some people say".

Weasel words are small phrases attached to the beginning of a statement, such as "some argue that..." or "critics say...", etc. A serious problem with weasel-worded statements is that their implication is misleading or too vague to substantiate. Even if an author intended to buttress an argument with an estimate of support, weasel words dilute meaning or make sentences open to multiple interpretations.

With weasel words, one can imply a statement is true when it may be no truer than its inverse. For example, an editor might preface the statement "Montreal is the best city in the world" with a disclaimer: "some people say that Montreal is the best city in the world". This is true: some people do say that Montreal is the best city in the world. The problem is that the reverse is true as well (some people say Montreal is not the best city in the world, and some go further and say that it is the worst), and thus it is easy to write a misinformative, slanted article composed of nothing but 'facts' like these, using Wikipedia to spread hearsay, personal opinion and propaganda. All it takes is for somebody to add "Critics have asserted that..." to a statement, and there is a danger that the casual reader will take their word for it.

Another problem is that weasel words can imply that a statement is more controversial than it is. For example, saying "some people claim that Queen was a popular band" unnecessarily raises a (false) question about the statement's truth.

If a statement is true without weasel words, remove them. If they are needed for the statement to be true, consider removing the statement. If there is a genuine opinion, make the preface more specific. Who are these people? When, where, and why did they say that? What kind of bias might they have? How many is "some"? If you consider the different answers these questions might have, you can see how meaningless the "some people say" qualification is. To assist users in deciding how to attribute ideas more precisely, the Wikipedia verifiability policy provides specific criteria for the support a statement must have for it to remain in an article unchallenged. This is one of Wikipedia's core content policies, determining the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles, and it is this policy that weasel words undermine.

1 Variations
2 Other problems
3 Improving weasel-worded statements
4 Fuzzy exceptions
5 Clear exceptions
6 See also
7 References

Variations

There are different variations on weasel wording, with the general principle of introducing some proposition without attributing it to any concrete source. "Most scientists believe that..." fails to provide any evidence that this is indeed the case, or to clarify just where between 50% and 100% "most" is, for that matter. The case is similar with things that are apparently true "according to some studies" or "contrary to popular opinion". "It has been proven that" allusion to proof does not constitute proof, "Science says" that science is an abstract concept which in actuality is not capable of speech, and "it could be argued" that the no original research policy is there for a reason. The word "seemingly" inserted into a statement raises the question of to whom the proposition seems thus, and on what evidentiary basis. And so on.

It is, of course, acceptable to introduce some fact or opinion and attribute it in an inline citation. e.g. "Research by Wong et al, 1996, has shown that rabies can be cured by acupuncture".

And at the bottom of the page:

W.F. Wong, A.M. Johnson and R. Goodrich (1996). "Acupuncture: An effective cure for rabies". J. Rabid Med. 345: 33-67.

Improving weasel-worded statements

Simply removing words like "some", "most", "many", "may", "some kind of", or "can" will strengthen any statement. Is it still correct? If not, then is that acceptable in a field like Physics or Chemistry? No. Psychology or Sociology? Probability of Significance=.95 (spell it out). If it's important to say, then where are the numbers?

The {{weasel}} tag can be added to the top of an article or section to draw attention to the presence of weasel words. For less drastic cases, the {{weasel word}} tag (^[who?]), the {{weasel-inline}} tag (^{[weasel words]}), or the {{Who?}} tag (^[who?]) (all of which include an internal wikilink to this page) can be added directly to the phrase in question; same as the {{fact}} tag (^{[citation needed]}).

The key to improving weasel words in articles is either a) to name a source for the opinion (attribution) or b) to change opinionated language to concrete facts (substantiate it).^[1]

Peacock terms are especially hard to deal with without using weasel words. Again, consider the sentence "The Yankees are the greatest baseball team in history." It is tempting to rephrase this in a weaselly way, for example, "Some people think that the Yankees are the greatest baseball team in history." But how can this opinion be qualified with an opinion holder? There are millions of Yankees fans and hundreds of baseball experts who would pick the Yankees as the best team in history. Instead, it would be better to eliminate the middleman of mentioning this opinion entirely, in favour of the facts that support the assertion:

"The New York Yankees have won 26 World Series championships—about three times as many as any other team."^[2]

This fact suggests that the Yankees are a superlative baseball franchise, rather than simply the greatest baseball team in history. The idea is to let the readers draw their own conclusions about the Yankees' greatness based on the number of World Series the Yankees have won. Objectivity over subjectivity. Dispassion, not bias.

Fuzzy exceptions

As with any rule of thumb, this guideline should be balanced against other needs for the text, especially the need for brevity and clarity. While ideally every assertion and assumption that is not necessarily true would have the various positions on it detailed and referenced, in practice much of human knowledge relies on the probably true rather than the necessarily true, and actually doing this would result in the article devolving into an incoherent jumble of backtracking explanations and justifications.

This means that asking "Who?" ought not to be an automatic process, but rather a judgment call. How controversial is the statement being made? How prominent are alternative views? How relevant would introducing the controversy be to the progression of this specific article — relevant enough to be worth whatever strain on the narrative that will result? These are the important questions to be asking when dealing with citation issues.

Clear exceptions

When a style guideline has precedents in other manuals of style or disallowed evidence in a courtroom from gossip or hearsay.
When the belief or opinion is actually the topic of discussion.

"In the Middle Ages, most people believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth." or "These people believe that our planet is flat".

When contrasting a minority opinion, it's not necessary to source the majority opinion when describing the minority one.

"Although Brahms's work is part of the classical music canon, Benjamin Britten has questioned its value."

When referencing the subject of a particular study, it is not necessary to identify the individual participants. For example,

"When asked about 0.999…, most students believed that there should be a 'final 9,' believing 1 − 0.999… to be a positive number which can be written as '0.000…1'."