Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 3/Avoiding puffery

So let's take an example. This example is of an American singer. Some of you may not know him. His name is Bob Dylan, and he is very famous in the English-speaking musical world. Look at this first sentence here; It's an example of *puffery* or a "peacock" phrase, peacock being a metaphor for *promotional*: "Bob Dylan is a defining figure of the 1960s counterculture and a brilliant songwriter."

This is an *un-encyclopedic* sentence. Wikipedia should never, ever say such a thing about anyone. "A defining figure" is an entirely subjective statement. "A brilliant songwriter" is an entirely subjective statement. And remember, when we write in the encyclopedia's voice, we are not giving grades. We don't say someone is brilliant or not brilliant. So that's an unacceptable way of phrasing it.

Well, if we remove all the puffery, what we're left with is something like, "Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter". Well, that's true. Bob Dylan *is* an American singer-songwriter. But is that all we can say about him? I mean, there are many, many American singer-songwriters, but there's only one Bob Dylan, and Bob Dylan is much more influential, much more successful than the vast majority of these other American singer-songwriters. How can we explain to a reader, especially a reader who's never heard of Bob Dylan, that this isn't just an American singer-songwriter and that's it, one of thousands. This is a person of some significance, of some importance.

This is where the third paragraph here comes to our rescue: It is an example of how to express the *importance* of Bob Dylan, while still only telling *facts*. Let's read it together:.

"Dylan was included in Time magazine's 100 Most Important People of the Century, in which he was called 'master poet, caustic social critic and intrepid guiding spirit of the counterculture generation'. By the mid 1970s, his songs had been covered by hundreds of other artists."

And of course, this would come with a citation! With a citation showing *where* Time magazine said that, and also a citation for the number of covers of his songs. So just imagine the citations are here.

As you can see, we are leaning on a famous magazine's "100 most important people of the century" as an *indication* that at least Time magazine thinks that Bob Dylan was one of the 100 most important people of the century. Now that's Time magazine -- an American magazine. Maybe a Chinese or Ghanaian magazine would not have named Bob Dylan one of the 100 most important people of the century, right? That's absolutely okay, because we're not saying *in Wikipedia's Voice*, "Bob Dylan is one of the most important people of the century". We're not! We're saying Dylan was included in *Time magazine's* 100 Most Important People of the Century. And let the reader make of that what they will.

An American reader may be more impressed by that than a Chinese reader, and that's okay. But we're stating a fact. It is a *fact* that the Time magazine 100 people list included Bob Dylan and gave him this description, "master poet, etc.", so that gives the reader some indication of what a certain magazine, not an unimportant magazine -- a well-known magazine, at least in the English-speaking world -- said about Bob Dylan.

And then there's a second part, unrelated to Time magazine, which is that his songs have been covered by *hundreds* of other artists. Think about it. Think about art, musicians. Most of them have *not* been covered by other artists, right? Or *hundreds* of other artists, literally just that fact, the fact that hundreds of other artists saw fit to cover, to re-record, Bob Dylan's songs, is proving his influence. That is the definition of an influential musician! Someone who makes other musicians follow his example, record his songs. Right? That's influence. That's showing the influence. Not just saying "believe us, he was influential". If we have a citation to some kind of reliable music database or list, that shows hundreds and hundreds of cover versions of Bob Dylan songs, we have shown his influence, not just *asserted* it, not just *said* he's influential. We have *demonstrated* he's influential.