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Do not include in the text of the lead sentence pronunciations for names of locations that are associated with non-English languages but whose pronunciations are well known in English (e.g., Poland, Paris). Do not include them for common English words, even if their pronunciations are counterintuitive for learners (laughter, sword).
A lead paragraph (sometimes shortened to lead; in the United States sometimes spelled lede) is the opening paragraph of an article, book chapter, or other written work that summarizes its main ideas. [1] Styles vary widely among the different types and genres of publications, from journalistic news-style leads to a more encyclopaedic variety.
The lead's job is not to sum up the topic, as understood elsewhere, but to sum up the article, regardless of how incomplete the article might be. If the lead does not sum up the topic, then the article should be improved first so it does sum up the topic. Then the lead can be tweaked so it finally does sum up the topic.
The lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic, identifying the topic, establishing context, and explaining why the topic is notable. The first few sentences should mention the most notable features of the article's subject – the essential facts that every reader should know.
For example, the Cleopatra article (which I picked because it's among the most-viewed FAs) has a 690-word lead, out of a total readable prose size of about 13,000 words, so the lead is just a little over 5% of the total prose size. This falls right into the 4-10% range mentioned above.
Over the years, Wikipedia lead sentences have become dumping grounds for any and all metadata about an article subject, to the point of becoming virtually unreadable. While some of this information is useful for establishing context, at lot of it is just cruft that actually degrades the quality of the lead.
If the quotation is a single word or a sentence fragment, place the terminal punctuation outside the closing quotation mark. When quoting a full sentence, the end of which coincides with the end of the sentence containing it, place terminal punctuation inside the closing quotation mark. Miller wanted, he said, "to create something timeless".
Example of a soft-lead sentence Humans will be going to the Moon again. The NASA announcement came as the agency requested $10 billion of appropriations for the project. An "off-lead" is the second most important front page news of the day. The off-lead appears either in the top left corner, or directly below the lead on the right. [9]