Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 3/Rewrite into neutrality 4

"Horrific drought conditions in illegally occupied Kashmir threatened to take countless innocent lives."

Is this sentence in Wikipedia's Voice? It is horrifically not in Wikipedia's Voice! Almost everything about this sentence is not neutral. First of all, "horrific". Does Wikipedia find *anything* horrific? Not even genocide, remember? Nothing is horrific in Wikipedia's Voice, just as nothing is lovely or fantastic.

What *can* we say about the drought conditions? How can we say that they're really, really bad? What can we say instead of "horrific"? We can *describe* the drought conditions: how many milliliters of rain have fallen, or not, or how long has it been since there was rain? That's a fact that we can cite from meteorological data, instead of saying "horrific drought conditions".

Or again, we could *quote* a meteorologist or a climate scientist who says something like "the worst drought in 32 years". That would convey just how serious of a drought it was, but not "horrific". Not even "severe". Remember, "severe" is also not an encyclopedic word. Okay, so we can either literally provide the data about the drought, or we can share an expert opinion about just how bad the drought is.

Onwards. As you correctly point out, "illegally occupied Kashmir" is absolutely a point of view. It may or may not be illegally occupied; not for us to say. What do we say instead? Simply "Kashmir". We don't have to give it any adjective. We don't have to get into the political situation of Kashmir. We're talking about a drought! That's happening regardless of the political control of Kashmir..

What about "countless innocent lives"? What about "countless"? What's the problem with "countless"? "Countless" is one of those never-encyclopedic words. Nothing is "countless". I mean, when it's countable objects, in this case lives. Lives absolutely can be counted. So the encyclopedia should never exaggerate, should never use hand-waving, like "Oh, *countless* lives". No. Countless is just an un-encyclopedic word.

Also "innocent". What's the problem with "innocent lives"? It is judgmental. Yes. I mean, even at the factual level, do we *know* they're all innocent? It is an emotive word. It is meant to heighten the drama. "Ooh, the drought is going to take countless innocent lives!" But what we're talking about is a drought that may take many people's lives, *whether or not* they're innocent, by whatever scale you judge innocence! I mean, that's also a matter of the legal system, and your religious ideas, you know -- whether the potential victims are "innocent" or not.

And it's also completely *irrelevant*! The fact that a drought may kill people is what's at stake here. And their innocence is irrelevant, because the drought doesn't care. So this is one of those emotive words that are inserted to heighten the drama, to make the sentence "pop". But it is inappropriate for the encyclopedia. The encyclopedia should say "drought conditions of so and so milliliters" or "the worst drought conditions in 32 years according to the Meteorological Institute in Kashmir", and then "may take as many as 3000 lives", for example, if we have a source for that number, or just "may cost many lives".

If that sounds a little drier to you than "horrific drought conditions" and "threaten to take" etc., that's as it should be! The encyclopedia's voice should be calm and dry and not impressed and not horrified, remember? So that's as it should be. We also shouldn't say "threaten to take lives". Does the drought *threaten* anything? The drought has no emotions and no intentions, right? It's a natural phenomenon. It doesn't threaten. That's another metaphor. So this whole sentence needs to be rewritten in a factual way.