Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 3/Avoiding euphemisms and idioms

Another thing we want to avoid is the use of euphemisms. Euphemisms are metaphorical or picturesque or less direct ways of saying things that we're not comfortable saying. For example, when we say someone has "passed away" instead of saying they died; when we say they are at "eternal rest" or they've gone to eternal rest instead of saying they died; When we say they "tied the knot" instead of saying they married. I mean, it doesn't have to be about negative things. We sometimes use euphemisms for happy things as well.

When we say "collateral damage", but are referring to civilian casualties, that's an example of a really whitewashed phrase. If you say "collateral damage", it sounds bureaucratic and not very tragic compared to saying "civilian casualties". And that's by design. The phrase "collateral damage" was *designed* to desensitize the public to the fact that there are civilian casualties. So we in the encyclopedia should stick to the facts and should not use such euphemisms as much as possible. We should stick to the actual verbs and nouns and call things what they are. If it's civilian casualties, we should say civilian casualties and not use such euphemisms.

We should also not use idioms and cliches, because they are not accessible to everyone. The encyclopedia should be as accessible as possible to absolutely everyone reading it. The imagined reader of the encyclopedia is someone with more or less a high school education. And in the case of English Wikipedia, as well as the French or Arabic Wikipedia, large Wikipedias that have people all over the world reading them, you cannot assume anything about this person. Not their country, not their religion, not anything. So you really want to avoid things that are known "by everyone" in your country or in your culture, but may not be known to other people. So phrases like "tip of the iceberg", "ace up the sleeve", "the whole nine yards", "at the end of the day", "white elephant". These are all metaphors and idioms that the encyclopedia would be better without. Just write what you mean, and don't use figurative language.