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Theories of urban planning

Planning theory is the body of scientific concepts, definitions, behavioral relationships, and assumptions that define the body of knowledge of urban planning. There are nine procedural theories of planning that remain the principal theories of planning procedure today: the Rational-Comprehensive approach, the Incremental approach, the Transformative Incremental (TI) approach, the Transactive approach, the Communicative approach, the Advocacy approach, the Equity approach, the Radical approach, and the Humanist or Phenomenological approach.

Background
Urban planning can include urban renewal, by adapting urban planning methods to existing cities suffering from decline. Alternatively, it can concern the massive challenges associated with urban growth, particularly in the Global South. All in all, urban planning exists in various forms and addresses many different issues. The modern origins of urban planning lie in the movement for urban reform that arose as a reaction against the disorder of the industrial city in the mid-19th century. Many of the early influencers were inspired by anarchism, which was popular in the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The new imagined urban form was meant to go hand-in-hand with a new society, based upon voluntary co-operation within self-governing communities.

In the late 20th century, the term sustainable development has come to represent an ideal outcome in the sum of all planning goals. Sustainable architecture involves renewable materials and energy sources and is increasing in importance as an environmentally friendly solution

Blueprint planning
Since at least the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment, urban planning had generally been assumed to be the physical planning and design of human communities. Therefore, it was seen as related to architecture and civil engineering, and thereby to be carried out by such experts. This kind of planning was physicalist and design-orientated, and involved the production of masterplans and blueprints which would show precisely what the 'end-state' of land use should be, similar to architectural and engineering plans. Similarly, the theory of urban planning was mainly interested in visionary planning and design which would demonstrate how the ideal city should be organised spatially.

Sanitary movement
Although it can be seen as an extension of the sort of civic pragmatism seen in Oglethorpe's plan for Savannah or William Penn's plan for Philadelphia, the roots of the rational planning movement lie in Britain's Sanitary movement (1800–1890). During this period, advocates such as Charles Booth argued for central organized, top-down solutions to the problems of industrializing cities. In keeping with the rising power of industry, the source of the planning authority in the Sanitary movement included both traditional governmental offices and private development corporations. In London and its surrounding suburbs, cooperation between these two entities created a network of new communities clustered around the expanding rail system.

Garden city movement
The Garden city movement was founded by Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928). His ideas were expressed in the book Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898). His influences included Benjamin Walter Richardson, who had published a pamphlet in 1876 calling for low population density, good housing, wide roads, an underground railway and for open space; Thomas Spence who had supported common ownership of land and the sharing of the rents it would produce; Edward Gibbon Wakefield who had pioneered the idea of colonizing planned communities to house the poor in Adelaide (including starting new cities separated by green belts at a certain point); James Silk Buckingham who had designed a model town with a central place, radial avenues and industry in the periphery; as well as Alfred Marshall, Peter Kropotkin and the back-to-the-land movement, which had all called for the moving of masses to the countryside.

Howards' vision was to combine the best of both the countryside and the city in a new environment called Town-Country. To make this happen, a group of individuals would establish a limited-dividend company to buy cheap agricultural land, which would then be developed with investment from manufacturers and housing for the workers. No more than 32,000 people would be housed in a settlement, spread over 1,000 acres. Around it would be a permanent green belt of 5,000 acres, with farms and institutions (such as mental institutions) which would benefit from the location. After reaching the limit, a new settlement would be started, connected by an inter-city rail, with the polycentric settlements together forming the "Social City". The lands of the settlements would be jointly owned by the inhabitants, who would use rents received from it to pay off the mortgage necessary to buy the land and then invest the rest in the community through social security. Actual garden cities were built by Howard in Letchworth, Brentham Garden Suburb, and Welwyn Garden City. The movement would also inspire the later New towns movement.

Linear city
Arturo Soria y Mata's idea of the Linear city (1882) replaced the traditional idea of the city as a centre and a periphery with the idea of constructing linear sections of infrastructure - roads, railways, gas, water, etc.- along an optimal line and then attaching the other components of the city along the length of this line. As compared to the concentric diagrams of Ebenezer Howard and other in the same period, Soria's linear city creates the infrastructure for a controlled process of expansion that joins one growing city to the next in a rational way, instead of letting them both sprawl. The linear city was meant to ‘ruralize the city and urbanize the countryside’, and to be universally applicable as a ring around existing cities, as a strip connecting two cities, or as an entirely new linear town across an unurbanized region. The idea was later taken up by Nikolay Alexandrovich Milyutin in the planning circles of the 1920s Soviet Union. The Ciudad Lineal was a practical application of the concept.

Regional planning movement
Patrick Geddes (1864-1932) was the founder of regional planning. His main influences were the geographers Élisée Reclus and Paul Vidal de La Blache, as well as the sociologist Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play. From these he received the idea of the natural region. According to Geddes, planning must start by surveying such a region by crafting a "Valley Section" which shows the general slope from mountains to the sea that can be identified across scale and place in the world, with the natural environment and the cultural environments produced by it included. This was encapsulated in the motto "Survey before Plan". He saw cities as being changed by technology into more regional settlements, for which he coined the term conurbation. Similar to the garden city movement, he also believed in adding green areas to these urban regions. The Regional Planning Association of America advanced his ideas, coming up with the 'regional city' which would have a variety of urban communities across a green landscape of farms, parks and wilderness with the help of telecommunication and the automobile. This had major influence on the County of London Plan, 1944.

City Beautiful movement
The City Beautiful movement was inspired by 19th century European capital cities such as Georges-Eugène Haussmann's Paris or the Vienna Ring Road. An influential figure was Daniel Burnham (1846-1912), who was the chief of construction of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Urban problems such as the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago had created a perceived need to reform the morality of the city among some of the elites. Burnham's greatest achievement was the Chicago plan of 1909. His aim was "to restore to the city a lost visual and aesthetic harmony, thereby creating the physical prerequisite for the emergence of a harmonious social order", essentially creating social reform through new slum clearance and creating public space, which also endeared it the support of the Progressivist movement. This was also believed to be economically advantageous by drawing in tourists and wealthy migrants. Because of this it has been referred to as "trickle-down urban development" and as "centrocentrist" for focusing only on the core of the city. Other major cities planned according to the movement principles included British colonial capitals in New Delhi, Harare, Lusaka Nairobi and Kampala, as well as that of Canberra in Australia, and Albert Speer's plan for the Nazi capital Germania.

Towers in the park
Le Corbusier (1887–1965) pioneered a new urban form called towers in the park. His approach was based on defining the house as 'a machine to live in'. The Plan Voisin he devised for Paris, which was never fulfilled, would have involved the demolition of much of historic Paris in favour of 18 uniform 700-foot tower blocks. Ville Contemporaine and the Ville Radieuse formulated his basic principles, including decongestion of the city by increased density and open space by building taller on a smaller footprint. Wide avenues should also be built to the city centre by demolishing old structures, which was criticized for lack of environmental awareness. His generic ethos of planning was based on the rule of experts who would "work out their plans in total freedom from partisan pressures and special interests" and that "once their plans are formulated, they must be implemented without opposition". His influence on the Soviet Union helped inspire the 'urbanists' who wanted to build planned cities full of massive apartment blocks in Soviet countryside. The only city which he ever actually helped plan was Chandigarh in India. Brasília, planned by Oscar Niemeyer, also was heavily influenced by his thought. Both cities suffered from the issue of unplanned settlements growing outside them.

Decentralised planning

In the United States, Frank Lloyd Wright similarly identified vehicular mobility as a principal planning metric. Car-based suburbs had already been developed in the Country Club District in 1907-1908 (including later the world's first car-based shopping centre of Country Club Plaza), as well as in Beverly Hills in 1914 and Palos Verdes Estates in 1923. Wright began to idealise this vision in his Broadacre City starting in 1924, with similarities to the garden city and regional planning movements. The fundamental idea was for technology to liberate individuals. In his Usonian vision, he described the city as"'spacious, well-landscaped highways, grade crossings eliminated by a new kind of integrated by-passing or over- or under-passing all traffic in cultivated or living areas … Giant roads, themselves great architecture, pass public service stations . . . passing by farm units, roadside markets, garden schools, dwelling places, each on its acres of individually adorned and cultivated ground'."This was justified as a democratic ideal, as "“Democracy is the ideal of reintegrated decentralization … many free units developing strength as they learn by function and grow together in spacious mutual freedom.” This vision was however criticized by Herbert Muschamp as being contradictory in its call for individualism while relying on the master-architect to design it all.

After World War II, suburbs similar to Broadacre City spread throughout the US, but without the social or economic aspects of his ideas. A notable example was that of Levittown, built 1947 to 1951. The suburban design was criticized for their lack of form by Lewis Mumford as it lacked clear boundaries, and by Ian Nairn because "Each building is treated in isolation, nothing binds it to the next one".

In the Soviet Union too, the so-called deurbanists (such as Moisei Ginzburg and Mikhail Okhitovich) advocated for the use of electricity and new transportation technologies (especially the car) to disperse the population from the cities to the countryside, with the ultimate aim of a "townless, fully decentralized, and evenly populated country". However, in 1931 the Communist Party ruled such views as forbidden.

Opposition to blueprint planning
Throughout both the United States and Europe, the rational planning movement declined in the latter half of the 20th century. The reason for the movement's decline was also its strength. By focusing so much on a design by technical elites, rational planning lost touch with the public it hoped to serve. Key events in this decline in the United States include the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis and the national backlash against urban renewal projects, particularly urban expressway projects. An influential critic of such planning was Jane Jacobs, who wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961, claimed to be "one of the most influential books in the short history of city planning". She attacked the garden city movement because its "prescription for saving the city was to do the city in" and because it "conceived of planning also as essentially paternalistic, if not authoritarian". The Corbusians on the other hand were claimed to be egoistic. In contrast, she defended the dense traditional inner-city neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights or North Beach, San Francisco, and argued that an urban neighbourhood required about 200-300 people per acre, as well as a high net ground coverage at the expense of open space. She also advocated for a diversity of land uses and building types, with the aim of having a constant churn of people throughout the neighbourhood across the times of the day. This essentially meant defending urban environments as they were before modern planning had aimed to start changing them. As she believed that such environments were essentially self-organizing, her approach was effectively one of laissez-faire, and has been criticized for not being able to guarantee "the development of good neighbourhoods".

The most radical opposition was declared in 1969 in a manifesto on the New Society, with the words that: "The whole concept of planning (the town-and-country kind at least) has gone cockeyed … Somehow, everything must be watched; nothing must be allowed simply to “happen.” No house can be allowed to be commonplace in the way that things just are commonplace: each project must be weighed, and planned, and approved, and only then built, and only after that discovered to be commonplace after all."Another form of opposition came from the advocacy planning movement, opposes to traditional top-down and technical planning.

Modernist planning
Cybernetics and modernism inspired the related theories of rational process and systems approaches to urban planning in the 1960s. They were imported into planning from other disciplines. The systems approach was a reaction to the issues associated with the traditional view of planning. It did not understand the social and economic sides of cities, the complexity and interconnectedness of urban life, as well as lacking in flexibility. The 'quantitative revolution' of the 1960s also created a drive for more scientific and precise thinking, while the rise of ecology made the approach more natural.

Systems theory
Systems theory is based on the conception of phenomena as 'systems', which are themselves coherent entities composed of interconnected and interdependent parts. A city can in this way be conceptualised as a system with interrelated parts of different land uses, connected by transport and other communications. The aim of urban planning thereby becomes that of planning and controlling the system. Similar ideas had been put forward by Geddes, who had seen cities and their regions as analogous to organisms, though they did not receive much attention while planning was dominated by architects.

The idea of the city as a system meant that it became critical for planners to understand how cities functioned. It also meant that a change to one part in a city would have effects on others parts as well. There were also doubts raised about the goal of producing detailed blueprints of how cities should look like in the end, instead suggesting the need for more flexible plans with trajectories instead of fixed futures. Planning should also be an ongoing process of monitoring and taking action in the city, rather than just producing the blueprint at one time. The systems approach also necessitated taking into account the economic and social aspects of cities, beyond just the aesthetic and physical ones.

Rational process approach
The focus on the procedural aspect of planning had already been pioneered by Geddes in his Survey-Analysis-Plan approach. However, this approach had several shortfalls. It did not consider the reasons for doing a survey in the first place. It also suggested that there should be simply a single plan to be considered. Finally, it did not take into account the implementation stage of the plan. There should also be further action in monitoring the outcomes of the plan after that. The rational process, in contrast, identified five different stages: (1) the definition of problems and aims; (2) the identification of alternatives; (3) the evaluation of alternatives; (4) implementation: (5) monitoring. This new approach represented a rejection of blueprint planning.

Incrementalism
Beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, critiques of the rational paradigm began to emerge and formed into several different schools of planning thought. The first of these schools is Lindblom's incrementalism. Lindblom describes planning as "muddling through" and thought that practical planning required decisions to be made incrementally. This incremental approach meant choosing from small number of policy approaches that can only have a small number consequences and are firmly bounded by reality, constantly adjusting the objectives of the planning process and using multiple analyses and evaluations.

Mixed scanning model
The mixed scanning model, developed by Etzioni, takes a similar, but slightly different approach. Etzioni (1968) suggested that organizations plan on two different levels: the tactical and the strategic. He posited that organizations could accomplish this by essentially scanning the environment on multiple levels and then choose different strategies and tactics to address what they found there. While Lindblom's approach only operated on the functional level Etzioni argued, the mixed scanning approach would allow planning organizations to work on both the functional and more big-picture oriented levels.

Political planning
In the 1960s, a view emerged of planning as an inherently normative and political activity. Advocates of this approach included Norman Dennis, Martin Meyerson, Edward C. Banfield, Paul Davidoff, and Norton E. Long, the latter remarking that:"Plans are policies and policies, in a democracy at any rate, spell politics. The question is not whether planning will reflect politics but whose politics it will reflect. What values and whose values will planners seek to implement? . . . No longer can the planner take refuge in the neutrality of the objectivity of the personally uninvolved scientist."The choices between alternative end points in planning was a key issue which was seen as political.

Participatory planning
Participatory planning is an urban planning paradigm that emphasizes involving the entire community in the strategic and management processes of urban planning; or, community-level planning processes, urban or rural. It is often considered as part of community development. Participatory planning aims to harmonize views among all of its participants as well as prevent conflict between opposing parties. In addition, marginalized groups have an opportunity to participate in the planning process.

Patrick Geddes had first advocated for the "real and active participation" of citizens when working in the British Raj, arguing against the "Dangers of Municipal Government from above" which would cause "detachment from public and popular feeling, and consequently, before long, from public and popular needs and usefulness". Further on, self-build was researched by Raymond Unwin in the 1930s in his Town Planning in Practice. The Italian anarchist architect Giancarlo De Carlo then argued in 1948 that "“The housing problem cannot be solved from above. It is a problem of the people, and it will not be solved, or even boldly faced, except by the concrete will and action of the people themselves", and that planning should exist "as the manifestation of communal collaboration". Through the Architectural Association School of Architecture, his ideas caught John Turner, who started working in Peru with Eduardo Neira. He would go on working in Lima from the mid-'50s to the mid-'60s. There he found that the barrios were not slums, but were rather highly organised and well-functioning. As a result, he came to the conclusion that:"'When dwellers control the major decisions and are free to make their own contributions in the design, construction or management of their housing, both this process and the environment produced stimulate individual and social well-being. When people have no control over nor responsibility for key decisions in the housing process, on the other hand, dwelling environments may instead become a barrier to personal fulfillment and a burden on the economy.'"The role of the government was to provide a framework within which people would be able to work freely, for example by providing them the necessary resources, infrastructure and land. Self-build was later again taken up by Christopher Alexander, who led a project called People Rebuild Berkeley in 1972, with the aim to create "self-sustaining, self-governing" communities, though it ended up being closer to traditional planning.

Synoptic planning
After the "fall" of blueprint planning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the synoptic model began to emerge as a dominant force in planning. Lane (2005) describes synoptic planning as having four central elements:

 * "(1) an enhanced emphasis on the specification of goals and targets; (2) an emphasis on quantitative analysis and predication of the environment; (3) a concern to identify and evaluate alternative policy options; and (4) the evaluation of means against ends (page 289)."

Public participation was first introduced into this model and it was generally integrated into the system process described above. However, the problem was that the idea of a single public interest still dominated attitudes, effectively devaluing the importance of participation because it suggests the idea that the public interest is relatively easy to find and only requires the most minimal form of participation.

Transactive planning
Transactive planning was a radical break from previous models. Instead of considering public participation as a method that would be used in addition to the normal training planning process, participation was a central goal. For the first time, the public was encouraged to take on an active role in the policy-setting process, while the planner took on the role of a distributor of information and a feedback source. Transactive planning focuses on interpersonal dialogue that develops ideas, which will be turned into action. One of the central goals is mutual learning where the planner gets more information on the community and citizens to become more educated about planning issues.

Advocacy planning
Formulated in the 1960s by lawyer and planning scholar Paul Davidoff, the advocacy planning model takes the perspective that there are large inequalities in the political system and in the bargaining process between groups that result in large numbers of people unorganized and unrepresented in the process. It concerns itself with ensuring that all people are equally represented in the planning process by advocating for the interests of the underprivileged and seeking social change. Again, public participation is a central tenet of this model. A plurality of public interests is assumed, and the role of the planner is essentially the one as a facilitator who either advocates directly for underrepresented groups directly or encourages them to become part of the process.

Radical planning
Radical planning is a stream of urban planning which seeks to manage development in an equitable and community-based manner. The seminal text to the radical planning movement is Foundations for a Radical Concept in Planning (1973), by Stephen Grabow and Allen Heskin. Grabow and Heskin provided a critique of planning as elitist, centralizing and change-resistant, and proposed a new paradigm based upon systems change, decentralization, communal society, facilitation of human development and consideration of ecology. Grabow and Heskin were joined by Head of Department of Town Planning from the Polytechnic of the South Bank Shean McConnell, and his 1981 work Theories for Planning.

In 1987 John Friedmann entered the fray with Planning in the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action, promoting a radical planning model based on "decolonization", "democratization", "self-empowerment" and "reaching out". Friedmann described this model as an "Agropolitan development" paradigm, emphasizing the re-localization of primary production and manufacture. In "Toward a Non-Euclidian Mode of Planning" (1993) Friedmann further promoted the urgency of decentralizing planning, advocating a planning paradigm that is normative, innovative, political, transactive and based on a social learning approach to knowledge and policy.

Bargaining model
The bargaining model views planning as the result of giving and take on the part of a number of interests who are all involved in the process. It argues that this bargaining is the best way to conduct planning within the bounds of legal and political institutions. The most interesting part of this theory of planning is that it makes public participation the central dynamic in the decision-making process. Decisions are made first and foremost by the public, and the planner plays a more minor role.

Communicative approach
The communicative approach to planning is perhaps the most difficult to explain. It focuses on using communication to help different interests in the process to understand each other. The idea is that each individual will approach a conversation with his or her own subjective experience in mind and that from that conversation shared goals and possibilities will emerge. Again, participation plays a central role in this model. The model seeks to include a broad range of voice to enhance the debate and negotiation that is supposed to form the core of actual plan making. In this model, participation is actually fundamental to the planning process happening. Without the involvement of concerned interests, there is no planning. Looking at each of these models it becomes clear that participation is not only shaped by the public in a given area or by the attitude of the planning organization or planners that work for it. In fact, public participation is largely influenced by how planning is defined, how planning problems are defined, the kinds of knowledge that planners choose to employ and how the planning context is set. Though some might argue that is too difficult to involve the public through transactive, advocacy, bargaining and communicative models because transportation is some ways more technical than other fields, it is important to note that transportation is perhaps unique among planning fields in that its systems depend on the interaction of a number of individuals and organizations.

Changes to the planning process
Strategic Urban Planning over past decades have witnessed the metamorphosis of the role of the urban planner in the planning process. More citizens calling for democratic planning & development processes have played a huge role in allowing the public to make important decisions as part of the planning process. Community organizers and social workers are now very involved in planning from the grassroots level. The term advocacy planning was coined by Paul Davidoff in his influential 1965 paper, "Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning" which acknowledged the political nature of planning and urged planners to acknowledge that their actions are not value-neutral and encouraged minority and underrepresented voices to be part of planning decisions. Benveniste argued that planners had a political role to play and had to bend some truth to power if their plans were to be implemented.

Developers have also played huge roles in development, particularly by planning projects. Many recent developments were results of large and small-scale developers who purchased land, designed the district and constructed the development from scratch. The Melbourne Docklands, for example, was largely an initiative pushed by private developers to redevelop the waterfront into a high-end residential and commercial district.

Recent theories of urban planning, espoused, for example by Salingaros see the city as an adaptive system that grows according to process similar to those of plants. They say that urban planning should thus take its cues from such natural processes. Such theories also advocate participation by inhabitants in the design of the urban environment, as opposed to simply leaving all development to large-scale construction firms.

In the process of creating an urban plan or urban design, carrier-infill is one mechanism of spatial organization in which the city's figure and ground components are considered separately. The urban figure, namely buildings, is represented as total possible building volumes, which are left to be designed by architects in the following stages. The urban ground, namely in-between spaces and open areas, are designed to a higher level of detail. The carrier-infill approach is defined by an urban design performing as the carrying structure that creates the shape and scale of the spaces, including future building volumes that are then infilled by architects' designs. The contents of the carrier structure may include street pattern, landscape architecture, open space, waterways, and other infrastructure. The infill structure may contain zoning, building codes, quality guidelines, and Solar Access based upon a solar envelope. Carrier-Infill urban design is differentiated from complete urban design, such as in the monumental axis of Brasília, in which the urban design and architecture were created together.

In carrier-infill urban design or urban planning, the negative space of the city, including landscape, open space, and infrastructure is designed in detail. The positive space, typically building a site for future construction, is only represented in unresolved volumes. The volumes are representative of the total possible building envelope, which can then be infilled by individual architects.

title: Theories of urban planning


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List of national parks of Kenya

The national park system of Kenya is maintained by the Kenya Wildlife Service. There are two main types of terrestrial protected areas in Kenya: national parks, and national reserves; there are also marine parks and marine reserves.

National parks

 * Aberdare National Park
 * Amboseli National Park
 * Arabuko Sokoke National Park
 * Central Island National Park
 * Chyulu Hills National Park
 * Hell's Gate National Park
 * Kisite-Mpunguti Marine National Park
 * Kora National Park
 * Lake Nakuru National Park
 * Malindi Marine National Park
 * Malka Mari National Park
 * Masai Mara National Park
 * Meru National Park
 * Mombasa Marine Park
 * Mount Elgon National Park
 * Mount Kenya National Park
 * Mount Longonot National Park
 * Nairobi National Park
 * Ol Donyo Sabuk National Park
 * Ruma National Park
 * Saiwa Swamp National Park
 * Sibiloi National Park
 * Tsavo East National Park
 * Tsavo West National Park
 * Watamu Marine National Park

National reserves

 * Arawale National Reserve
 * Bisanadi National Reserve
 * Boni National Reserve
 * Buffalo Springs National Reserve
 * Dodori National Reserve
 * Kakamega Forest National Reserve
 * Kisumu Impala Sanctuary
 * Lake Bogoria National Reserve
 * Masai Mara National Reserve
 * Mwaluganje elephant sanctuary
 * Mwea National Reserve
 * Mwingi National Reserve
 * Rahole National Reserve
 * Rimoi National Reserve
 * Samburu National Reserve
 * Shimba Hills National Reserve
 * Tana River Primate Reserve
 * Witu Forest Reserve (Utwani Forest Reserve)

Marine parks and reserves

 * Kisite-Mpunguti Marine National Park
 * Kiunga Marine National Reserve
 * Malindi Marine National Park
 * Mombasa Marine National Park and Reserve
 * Tana River Primate National Reserve
 * Watamu Marine National Park

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: List of national parks of Kenya


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Talk:Nash equilibrium

Nash equilibrium available online
The seminal journal paper in which Nash introduces what is now called the Nash equilibrium is "Non-Cooperative Games", John Nash, The Annals of Mathematics 54(2):286-295, 1951. It is available online to for a fee at http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-486X%28195109%292%3A54%3A2%3C286%3ANG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G (many universities subscribe to JSTOR, so this link should work for at least some people beside me)

I'm not posting that directly to the page since I'm not sure whether it's OK to post links to for-pay resources. If it is OK, then please copy this to the article page.

--JP, Nov 10 2005

Well, I just did that yesterday, before reading this note. I will remove what I did right away. The article is available for a fee, but many universities and colleges provide free access to this and other for fee-services for their students.

--Zsolt, June 7, 2006

On the other hand, referencing the article itself, without a link to the for-fee online article is probably ok. So I just took out the link to that on-line version. This way people can still find it if they want to.

--Zsolt, June 7, 2006

Removed setence
I reverted an edit by anon, which added this setence to one section:

"choosing the best strategy given the strategies that others have chosen"

The sentence was out of context and imcomplete. If the anon would like to add it in context I'm sure it would be helpful. --Kzollman 17:59, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Coordination game
As it turns out the entry Coordination game redirects here. Given the wide discussion of coordination games, I think it diserves its own entry. Would folks mind if I seeded the entry with the material here, and removed the redirect? thanks! -Kzollman 23:43, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

 * Presently, nothing links to Coordination game other than daughters of Nash Equilibrium, and both of these actually give its pay-off matrix (Mixed strategy, Pure strategy). Therefore, there can't be a problem expanding that article from a redirect.
 * Cheers, Wragge 00:56, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

 * Done! best --Kzollman 00:48, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

Fixed points
In my game theory class and text books we proved the existence of the Nash equilibrium using Kakutani fixed point theorem, a generalization of Brouwer fixed point theorem. Does anyone smarter than me know if Brower's is strong enough to prove the existence (as stated in the article)? --Kzollman 00:48, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

 * Okay, I fixed the proof. --best, kevin  · · · Kzollman | Talk · · · 06:03, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Experimental Economics
Could or should we add a section on experimental results? For example there's some info (without citation) about coordination games on the experimental economics page. Can people who have more range and depth contribute more examples, etc?

PS I also feel like the sentence in the introduction about experimental economics needs citations and editing.

title: Talk:Nash equilibrium


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Richard Barthelmess

Richard Semler Barthelmess (May 9, 1895 – August 17, 1963) was an American film actor, principally of the Hollywood silent era. He starred opposite Lillian Gish in D. W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms (1919) and Way Down East (1920) and was among the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927. The following year, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for two films: The Patent Leather Kid and The Noose.

Early life
Barthelmess was born in New York City, the son of Caroline W. Harris, a stage actress, and Alfred W. Barthelmess. His father died when he was a year old. Through his mother, he grew up in the theatre, doing "walk-ons" from an early age. In contrast to that, he was educated at Hudson River Military Academy at Nyack, New York and Trinity College at Hartford, Connecticut. He did some acting in college and other amateur productions. By 1919 he had five years in stock company experience.

Career
Russian actress Alla Nazimova, a friend of the family, was taught English by Caroline Barthelmess. Nazimova convinced Richard Barthelmess to try acting professionally, and he made his debut screen appearance in 1916 in the serial Gloria's Romance as an uncredited extra. He also appeared as a supporting player in several films starring Marguerite Clark. His next role, in War Brides opposite Nazimova, attracted the attention of director D.W. Griffith, who offered him several important roles, finally casting him opposite Lillian Gish in Broken Blossoms (1919) and Way Down East (1920). He founded his own production company, Inspiration Film Company, together with Charles Duell and Henry King. One of their films, Tol'able David (1921), in which Barthelmess starred as a teenage mailman who finds courage, was a major success. In 1922, Photoplay described him as the "idol of every girl in America."

Barthelmess had a large female following during the 1920s. An admirer wrote to the editor of Picture-Play Magazine in 1921:"Different fans have different opinions, and although Wallace Reid, Thomas Meighan, and Niles Welch are mighty fine chaps, I think that Richard Barthelmess beats them all. Dick is getting more and more popular every day, and why? Because his wonderful black hair and soulful eyes are enough to make any young girl adore him. The first play I saw Dick in was Boots—Dorothy Gish playing the lead. This play impressed me so that I went to see every play in which he appeared—Three Men and a Girl, Scarlet Days, The Love Flower, and Broken Blossoms, in which I decided that Dick was my favorite. I am looking forward to Way Down East as being a great success, because I know Dick will play a good part."

Barthelmess soon became one of Hollywood's higher paid performers, starring in such classics as The Patent Leather Kid in 1927 and The Noose in 1928; he was nominated for Best Actor at the first Academy Awards for his performance in both films. In addition, he won a special citation for producing The Patent Leather Kid.

With the advent of the sound era, Barthelmess remained a star for a number of years. He played numerous leads in talkie films, most notably Son of the Gods (1930), The Dawn Patrol (1930), The Last Flight (1931), The Cabin in the Cotton (1932) and Heroes for Sale (1933). He was able to choose his own material and often played in controversial or socially conscious films. However, his popularity began to wane in the 1930s. He became too old for the boyish leads he usually played. In his later films (between 1939 and his retirement in 1942), he turned towards character roles – most notably, his supporting role as the disgraced pilot and husband of Rita Hayworth's character in Only Angels Have Wings (1939).

Post-acting career
Barthelmess failed to maintain the stardom of his silent film days and gradually left entertainment. He enlisted in the United States Navy Reserve during World War II, and served as a lieutenant commander,stationed at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. He never returned to film, preferring to live off his real estate investments.

Personal life
On June 18, 1920, Barthelmess married Mary Hay, a stage and screen star, in New York. They had one daughter, Mary Barthelmess, before divorcing on January 15, 1927.

In August 1927, Barthelmess became engaged to Katherine Young Wilson, a Broadway actress. However, the engagement was called off due to Wilson's stated desire to continue acting, or possibly his affair around this time with the journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns.

On April 21, 1928, Barthelmess married Jessica Stewart Sargent. He later adopted her son, Stewart, from a previous marriage. They remained married until Barthelmess' death in 1963.

Death
Barthelmess died of throat cancer on August 17, 1963, aged 68, in Southampton, New York. He was interred at the Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum in Hartsdale, New York.

Legacy

 * Barthelmess was a founder of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
 * In 1960, Barthelmess received a motion picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6755 Hollywood Boulevard for his contributions to the film industry.
 * Barthelmess was among the second group of recipients of the George Eastman Award in 1957, given by the George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.
 * Composer Katherine Allan Lively dedicated her piano composition Within the Walls of China: A Chinese Episode to Barthelmess in the sheet music published in 1923 by G. Schirmer, Inc. An article in The Music Trades reported that Mrs. Lively was inspired by a viewing of the film Broken Blossoms, and performed the piece for Barthelmess and his friends in New York in the summer of 1922.

Filmography

 * Features:
 * Short subjects:

title: Richard Barthelmess


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Writer

A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles, genres and techniques to communicate ideas, to inspire feelings and emotions, or to entertain. Writers may develop different forms of writing such as novels, short stories, monographs, travelogues, plays, screenplays, teleplays, songs, and essays as well as reports, educational material, and news articles that may be of interest to the general public. Writers' works are nowadays published across a wide range of media. Skilled writers who are able to use language to express ideas well, often contribute significantly to the cultural content of a society.

The term "writer" is also used elsewhere in the arts and music, such as songwriter or a screenwriter, but also a stand-alone "writer" typically refers to the creation of written language. Some writers work from an oral tradition.

Writers can produce material across a number of genres, fictional or non-fictional. Other writers use multiple media such as graphics or illustration to enhance the communication of their ideas. Another recent demand has been created by civil and government readers for the work of non-fictional technical writers, whose skills create understandable, interpretive documents of a practical or scientific kind. Some writers may use images (drawing, painting, graphics) or multimedia to augment their writing. In rare instances, creative writers are able to communicate their ideas via music as well as words.

As well as producing their own written works, writers often write about how they write (their writing process); why they write (that is, their motivation); and also comment on the work of other writers (criticism). Writers work professionally or non-professionally, that is, for payment or without payment and may be paid either in advance, or on acceptance, or only after their work is published. Payment is only one of the motivations of writers and many are not paid for their work.

The term writer has been used as a synonym of author, although the latter term has a somewhat broader meaning and is used to convey legal responsibility for a piece of writing, even if its composition is anonymous, unknown or collaborative. Author most often refers to the writer of a book.

Types
Writers choose from a range of literary genres to express their ideas. Most writing can be adapted for use in another medium. For example, a writer's work may be read privately or recited or performed in a play or film. Satire for example, may be written as a poem, an essay, a film, a comic play, or a part of journalism. The writer of a letter may include elements of criticism, biography, or journalism.

Many writers work across genres. The genre sets the parameters but all kinds of creative adaptation have been attempted: novel to film; poem to play; history to musical. Writers may begin their career in one genre and change to another. For example, historian William Dalrymple began in the genre of travel literature and also writes as a journalist. Many writers have produced both fiction and non-fiction works and others write in a genre that crosses the two. For example, writers of historical romances, such as Georgette Heyer, create characters and stories set in historical periods. In this genre, the accuracy of the history and the level of factual detail in the work both tend to be debated. Some writers write both creative fiction and serious analysis, sometimes using other names to separate their work. Dorothy Sayers, for example, wrote crime fiction but was also a playwright, essayist, translator, and critic.

Poet
Poets make maximum use of the language to achieve an emotional and sensory effect as well as a cognitive one. To create these effects, they use rhyme and rhythm and they also apply the properties of words with a range of other techniques such as alliteration and assonance. A common topic is love and its vicissitudes. Shakespeare's best-known love story Romeo and Juliet, for example, written in a variety of poetic forms, has been performed in innumerable theaters and made into at least eight cinematic versions. John Donne is another poet renowned for his love poetry.

Satirist
A satirist uses wit to ridicule the shortcomings of society or individuals, with the intent of revealing stupidity. Usually, the subject of the satire is a contemporary issue such as ineffective political decisions or politicians, although human vices such as greed are also a common and prevalent subject. Philosopher Voltaire wrote a satire about optimism called Candide, which was subsequently turned into an opera, and many well known lyricists wrote for it. There are elements of Absurdism in Candide, just as there are in the work of contemporary satirist Barry Humphries, who writes comic satire for his character Dame Edna Everage to perform on stage.

Satirists use different techniques such as irony, sarcasm, and hyperbole to make their point and they choose from the full range of genres – the satire may be in the form of prose or poetry or dialogue in a film, for example. One of the most well-known satirists is Jonathan Swift who wrote the four-volume work Gulliver's Travels and many other satires, including A Modest Proposal and The Battle of the Books.

Short story writer
A short story writer is a writer of short stories, works of fiction that can be read in a single sitting.

Librettist

Libretti (the plural of libretto) are the texts for musical works such as operas. The Venetian poet and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, for example, wrote the libretto for some of Mozart's greatest operas. Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa were Italian librettists who wrote for Giacomo Puccini. Most opera composers collaborate with a librettist but unusually, Richard Wagner wrote both the music and the libretti for his works himself.

Lyricist
Usually writing in verses and choruses, a lyricist specializes in writing lyrics, the words that accompany or underscore a song or opera. Lyricists also write the words for songs. In the case of Tom Lehrer, these were satirical. Lyricist Noël Coward, who wrote musicals and songs such as "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" and the recited song "I Went to a Marvellous Party", also wrote plays and films and performed on stage and screen as well. Writers of lyrics, such as these two, adapt other writers' work as well as create entirely original parts.

Playwright

A playwright writes plays which may or may not be performed on a stage by actors. A play's narrative is driven by dialogue. Like novelists, playwrights usually explore a theme by showing how people respond to a set of circumstances. As writers, playwrights must make the language and the dialogue succeed in terms of the characters who speak the lines as well as in the play as a whole. Since most plays are performed, rather than read privately, the playwright has to produce a text that works in spoken form and can also hold an audience's attention over the period of the performance. Plays tell "a story the audience should care about", so writers have to cut anything that worked against that. Plays may be written in prose or verse. Shakespeare wrote plays in iambic pentameter as does Mike Bartlett in his play King Charles III (2014).

Playwrights also adapt or re-write other works, such as plays written earlier or literary works originally in another genre. Famous playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen or Anton Chekhov have had their works adapted several times. The plays of early Greek playwrights Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus are still performed. Adaptations of a playwright's work may be honest to the original or creatively interpreted. If the writers' purpose in re-writing the play is to make a film, they will have to prepare a screenplay. Shakespeare's plays, for example, while still regularly performed in the original form, are often adapted and abridged, especially for the cinema. An example of a creative modern adaptation of a play that nonetheless used the original writer's words, is Baz Luhrmann's version of Romeo and Juliet. The amendment of the name to Romeo + Juliet indicates to the audience that the version will be different from the original. Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a play inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet that takes two of Shakespeare's most minor characters and creates a new play in which they are the protagonists.

Screenwriter
Screenwriters write a screenplay – or script – that provides the words for media productions such as films, television series and video games. Screenwriters may start their careers by writing the screenplay speculatively; that is, they write a script with no advance payment, solicitation or contract. On the other hand, they may be employed or commissioned to adapt the work of a playwright or novelist or other writer. Self-employed writers who are paid by contract to write are known as freelancers and screenwriters often work under this type of arrangement.

Screenwriters, playwrights and other writers are inspired by the classic themes and often use similar and familiar plot devices to explore them. For example, in Shakespeare's Hamlet is a "play within a play", which the hero uses to demonstrate the king's guilt. Hamlet hives the co-operation of the actors to set up the play as a thing "wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king". Teleplay writer Joe Menosky deploys the same "play within a play" device in an episode of the science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager. The bronze-age playwright/hero enlists the support of a Star Trek crew member to create a play that will convince the ruler (or "patron" as he is called), of the futility of war.

Speechwriter
A speechwriter prepares the text for a speech to be given before a group or crowd on a specific occasion and for a specific purpose. They are often intended to be persuasive or inspiring, such as the speeches given by skilled orators like Cicero; charismatic or influential political leaders like Nelson Mandela; or for use in a court of law or parliament. The writer of the speech may be the person intended to deliver it, or it might be prepared by a person hired for the task on behalf of someone else. Such is the case when speechwriters are employed by many senior-level elected officials and executives in both government and private sectors.

Biographer
Biographers write an account of another person's life. Richard Ellmann (1918–1987), for example, was an eminent and award-winning biographer whose work focused on the Irish writers James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, and Oscar Wilde. For the Wilde biography, he won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

Critic
Critics consider and assess the extent to which a work succeeds in its purpose. The work under consideration may be literary, theatrical, musical, artistic, or architectural. In assessing the success of a work, the critic takes account of why it was done – for example, why a text was written, for whom, in what style, and under what circumstances. After making such an assessment, critics write and publish their evaluation, adding the value of their scholarship and thinking to substantiate any opinion. The theory of criticism is an area of study in itself: a good critic understands and is able to incorporate the theory behind the work they are evaluating into their assessment. Some critics are already writers in another genre. For example, they might be novelists or essayists. Influential and respected writer/critics include the art critic Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) and the literary critic James Wood (born 1965), both of whom have books published containing collections of their criticism. Some critics are poor writers and produce only superficial or unsubstantiated work. Hence, while anyone can be an uninformed critic, the notable characteristics of a good critic are understanding, insight, and an ability to write well.

Editor

An editor prepares literary material for publication. The material may be the editor's own original work but more commonly, an editor works with the material of one or more other people. There are different types of editor. Copy editors format text to a particular style and/or correct errors in grammar and spelling without changing the text substantively. On the other hand, an editor may suggest or undertake significant changes to a text to improve its readability, sense or structure. This latter type of editor can go so far as to excise some parts of the text, add new parts, or restructure the whole. The work of editors of ancient texts or manuscripts or collections of works results in differing editions. For example, there are many editions of Shakespeare's plays by notable editors who also contribute original introductions to the resulting publication. Editors who work on journals and newspapers have varying levels of responsibility for the text. They may write original material, in particular editorials, select what is to be included from a range of items on offer, format the material, and/or fact check its accuracy.

Encyclopaedist

Encyclopaedists create organised bodies of knowledge. Denis Diderot (1713–1784) is renowned for his contributions to the Encyclopédie. The encyclopaedist Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1590) was a Franciscan whose Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España is a vast encyclopedia of Mesoamerican civilization, commonly referred to as the Florentine Codex, after the Italian manuscript library which holds the best-preserved copy.

Essayist
Essayists write essays, which are original pieces of writing of moderate length in which the author makes a case in support of an opinion. They are usually in prose, but some writers have used poetry to present their argument.

Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. The purpose of a historian is to employ historical analysis to create coherent narratives that explain "what happened" and "why or how it happened". Professional historians typically work in colleges and universities, archival centers, government agencies, museums, and as freelance writers and consultants. Edward Gibbon's six-volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire influenced the development of historiography.

Lexicographer
Writers who create dictionaries are called lexicographers. One of the most famous is Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), whose Dictionary of the English Language was regarded not only as a great personal scholarly achievement but was also a dictionary of such pre-eminence, that would have been referred to by such writers as Jane Austen.

Researcher/Scholar
Researchers and scholars who write about their discoveries and ideas sometimes have profound effects on society. Scientists and philosophers are good examples because their new ideas can revolutionise the way people think and how they behave. Three of the best known examples of such a revolutionary effect are Nicolaus Copernicus, who wrote De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543); Charles Darwin, who wrote On the Origin of Species (1859); and Sigmund Freud, who wrote The Interpretation of Dreams (1899).

These three highly influential, and initially very controversial, works changed the way people understood their place in the world. Copernicus's heliocentric view of the cosmos displaced humans from their previously accepted place at the center of the universe; Darwin's evolutionary theory placed humans firmly within, as opposed to above, the order of manner; and Freud's ideas about the power of the unconscious mind overcame the belief that humans were consciously in control of all their own actions.

Translator
Translators have the task of finding some equivalence in another language to a writer's meaning, intention and style. Translators whose work has had very significant cultural effect include Al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf ibn Maṭar, who translated Elements from Greek into Arabic and Jean-François Champollion, who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs with the result that he could publish the first translation of the Rosetta Stone hieroglyphs in 1822. Difficulties with translation are exacerbated when words or phrases incorporate rhymes, rhythms, or puns; or when they have connotations in one language that are non-existent in another. For example, the title of Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier is supposedly untranslatable because "no English adjective will convey all the shades of meaning that can be read into the simple [French] word 'grand' which takes on overtones as the story progresses." Translators have also become a part of events where political figures who speak different languages meet to look into the relations between countries or solve political conflicts. It is highly critical for the translator to deliver the right information as a drastic impact could be caused if any error occurred.

Blogger
Writers of blogs, which have appeared on the World Wide Web since the 1990s, need no authorisation to be published. The contents of these short opinion pieces or "posts" form a commentary on issues of specific interest to readers who can use the same technology to interact with the author, with an immediacy hitherto impossible. The ability to link to other sites means that some blog writers – and their writing – may become suddenly and unpredictably popular. Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani education activist, rose to prominence due to her blog for BBC.

A blog writer is using the technology to create a message that is in some ways like a newsletter and in other ways, like a personal letter. "The greatest difference between a blog and a photocopied school newsletter, or an annual family letter photocopied and mailed to a hundred friends, is the potential audience and the increased potential for direct communication between audience members". Thus, as with other forms of letters the writer knows some of the readers, but one of the main differences is that "some of the audience will be random" and "that presumably changes the way we [writers] write." It has been argued that blogs owe a debt to Renaissance essayist Michel de Montaigne, whose Essais ("attempts"), were published in 1580, because Montaigne "wrote as if he were chatting to his readers: just two friends, whiling away an afternoon in conversation".

Columnist
Columnists write regular parts for newspapers and other periodicals, usually containing a lively and entertaining expression of opinion. Some columnists have had collections of their best work published as a collection in a book so that readers can re-read what would otherwise be no longer available. Columns are quite short pieces of writing so columnists often write in other genres as well. An example is the female columnist Elizabeth Farrelly, who besides being a columnist, is also an architecture critic and author of books.

Diarist
Writers who record their experiences, thoughts, or emotions in a sequential form over a period of time in a diary are known as diarists. Their writings can provide valuable insights into historical periods, specific events, or individual personalities. Examples include Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), an English administrator and Member of Parliament, whose detailed private diary provides eyewitness accounts of events during the 17th century, most notably of the Great Fire of London. Anne Frank (1929–1945) was a 13-year-old Dutch girl whose diary from 1942 to 1944 records both her experiences as a persecuted Jew in World War II and an adolescent dealing with intra-family relationships.

Journalist
Journalists write reports about current events after investigating them and gathering information. Some journalists write reports about predictable or scheduled events such as social or political meetings. Others are investigative journalists who need to undertake considerable research and analysis in order to write an explanation or account of something complex that was hitherto unknown or not understood. Often investigative journalists are reporting criminal or corrupt activity which puts them at risk personally and means that what it is likely that attempts may be made to attack or suppress what they write. An example is Bob Woodward, a journalist who investigated and wrote about criminal activities by the US President.

Memoirist
Writers of memoirs produce accounts from the memories of their own lives, which are considered unusual, important, or scandalous enough to be of interest to general readers. Although meant to be factual, readers are alerted to the likelihood of some inaccuracies or bias towards an idiosyncratic perception by the choice of genre. A memoir, for example, is allowed to have a much more selective set of experiences than an autobiography which is expected to be more complete and make a greater attempt at balance. Well-known memoirists include Frances Vane, Viscountess Vane, and Giacomo Casanova.

Ghostwriter
Ghostwriters write for, or in the style of, someone else so the credit goes to the person on whose behalf the writing is done.

Letter writer

Writers of letters use a reliable form of transmission of messages between individuals, and surviving sets of letters provide insight into the motivations, cultural contexts, and events in the lives of their writers. Peter Abelard (1079–1142), philosopher, logician, and theologian is known not only for the heresy contained in some of his work, and the punishment of having to burn his own book, but also for the letters he wrote to Héloïse d'Argenteuil (1090?–1164).

The letters (or epistles) of Paul the Apostle were so influential that over the two thousand years of Christian history, Paul became "second only to Jesus in influence and the amount of discussion and interpretation generated".

Report writer
Report writers are people who gather information, organise and document it so that it can be presented to some person or authority in a position to use it as the basis of a decision. Well-written reports influence policies as well as decisions. For example, Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) wrote reports that were intended to effect administrative reform in matters concerning health in the army. She documented her experience in the Crimean War and showed her determination to see improvements: "...after six months of incredible industry she had put together and written with her own hand her Notes affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army. This extraordinary composition, filling more than eight hundred closely printed pages, laying down vast principles of far-reaching reform, discussing the minutest detail of a multitude of controversial subjects, containing an enormous mass of information of the most varied kinds – military, statistical, sanitary, architectural" became for a long time, the "leading authority on the medical administration of armies".

The logs and reports of Master mariner William Bligh contributed to his being honourably acquitted at the court-martial inquiring into the loss of HMS Bounty.

Scribe

A scribe writes ideas and information on behalf of another, sometimes copying from another document, sometimes from oral instruction on behalf of an illiterate person, sometimes transcribing from another medium such as a tape recording, shorthand, or personal notes.

Being able to write was a rare achievement for over 500 years in Western Europe so monks who copied texts were scribes responsible for saving many texts from first times. The monasteries, where monks who knew how to read and write lived, provided an environment stable enough for writing. Irish monks, for example, came to Europe in about 600 and "found manuscripts in places like Tours and Toulouse" which they copied. The monastic writers also illustrated their books with highly skilled art work using gold and rare colors.

Technical writer
A technical writer prepares instructions or manuals, such as user guides or owner's manuals for users of equipment to follow. Technical writers also write different procedures for business, professional or domestic use. Since the purpose of technical writing is practical rather than creative, its most important quality is clarity. The technical writer, unlike the creative writer, is required to adhere to the relevant style guide.

Writing process

There is a range of approaches that writers take to the task of writing. Each writer needs to find their own process and most describe it as more or less a struggle. Sometimes writers have had the bad fortune to lose their work and have had to start again. Before the invention of photocopiers and electronic text storage, a writer's work had to be stored on paper, which meant it was very susceptible to fire in particular. (In very earlier times, writers used vellum and clay which were more robust materials.) Writers whose work was destroyed before completion include L. L. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, whose years of work were thrown into the fire by his father because he was afraid that "his son would be thought a spy working code". Essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle, lost the only copy of a manuscript for The French Revolution: A History when it was mistakenly thrown into the fire by a maid. He wrote it again from the beginning. Writers usually develop a personal schedule. Angus Wilson, for example, wrote for a number of hours every morning.

Writer's block is a relatively common experience among writers, especially professional writers, when for a period of time the writer feels unable to write for reasons other than lack of skill or commitment.

Sole
Most writers write alone – typically they are engaged in a solitary activity that requires them to struggle with both the concepts they are trying to express and the best way to express it. This may mean choosing the best genre or genres as well as choosing the best words. Writers often develop idiosyncratic solutions to the problem of finding the right words to put on a blank page or screen. "Didn't Somerset Maugham also write facing a blank wall? ... Goethe couldn't write a line if there was another person anywhere in the same house, or so he said at some point."

Collaborative
Collaborative writing means that other authors write and contribute to a part of writing. In this approach, it is highly likely the writers will collaborate on editing the part too. The more usual process is that the editing is done by an independent editor after the writer submits a draft version.

In some cases, such as that between a librettist and composer, a writer will collaborate with another artist on a creative work. One of the best known of these types of collaborations is that between Gilbert and Sullivan. Librettist W. S. Gilbert wrote the words for the comic operas created by the partnership.

Committee
Occasionally, a writing task is given to a committee of writers. The most well-known example is the task of translating the Bible into English, sponsored by King James VI of England in 1604 and accomplished by six committees, some in Cambridge and some in Oxford, who were allocated different sections of the text. The resulting Authorized King James Version, published in 1611, has been described as an "everlasting miracle" because its writers (that is, its Translators) sought to "hold themselves consciously poised between the claims of accessibility and beauty, plainness and richness, simplicity and majesty, the people and the king", with the result that the language communicates itself "in a way which is quite unaffected, neither literary nor academic, not historical, nor reconstructionist, but transmitting a nearly incredible immediacy from one end of human civilisation to another."

Multimedia
Some writers support the verbal part of their work with images or graphics that are an integral part of the way their ideas are communicated. William Blake is one of rare poets who created his own paintings and drawings as integral parts of works such as his Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Cartoonists are writers whose work depends heavily on hand drawn imagery. Other writers, especially writers for children, incorporate painting or drawing in more or less sophisticated ways. Shaun Tan, for example, is a writer who uses imagery extensively, sometimes combining fact, fiction and illustration, sometimes for a didactic purpose, sometimes on commission. Children's writers Beatrix Potter, May Gibbs, and Theodor Seuss Geisel are as well known for their illustrations as for their texts.

Crowd sourced
Some writers contribute very small sections to a part of writing that cumulates as a result. This method is particularly suited to very large works, such as dictionaries and encyclopaedias. The best known example of the former is the Oxford English Dictionary, under the editorship of lexicographer James Murray, who was provided with the prolific and helpful contributions of W.C. Minor, at the time an inmate of a hospital for the criminally insane.

The best known example of the latter – an encyclopaedia that is crowdsourced – is Wikipedia, which relies on millions of writers and editors such as Simon Pulsifer worldwide.

Motivations
Writers have many different reasons for writing, among which is usually some combination of self-expression and recording facts, history or research results. The many physician writers, for example, have combined their observation and knowledge of the human condition with their desire to write and contributed many poems, plays, translations, essays and other texts. Some writers write extensively on their motivation and on the likely motivations of other writers. For example, George Orwell's essay "Why I Write" (1946) takes this as its subject. As to "what constitutes success or failure to a writer", it has been described as "a complicated business, where the material rubs up against the spiritual, and psychology plays a big part".

Command
Some writers are the authors of specific military orders whose clarity will determine the outcome of a battle. Among the most controversial and unsuccessful was Lord Raglan's order at the Charge of the Light Brigade, which being vague and misinterpreted, led to defeat with many casualties.

Develop skill/explore ideas
Some writers use the writing task to develop their own skill (in writing itself or in another area of knowledge) or explore an idea while they are producing a piece of writing. Philologist J. R. R. Tolkien, for example, created a new language for his fantasy books.

Entertain
Some genres are a particularly appropriate choice for writers whose chief purpose is to entertain. Among them are limericks, many comics and thrillers. Writers of children's literature seek to entertain children but are also usually mindful of the educative function of their work as well.

"I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree; Indeed, unless the billboards fall I'll never see a tree at all. Ogden Nash, humorous poet, reworking a poem by Joyce Kilmer for comic effect."

Influence
Anger has motivated many writers, including Martin Luther, angry at religious corruption, who wrote the Ninety-five Theses in 1517, to reform the church, and Émile Zola (1840–1902) who wrote the public letter, J'Accuse in 1898 to bring public attention to government injustice, as a consequence of which he had to flee to England from his native France. Such writers have affected ideas, opinion or policy significantly.

Payment
Writers may write a particular piece for payment (even if at other times, they write for another reason), such as when they are commissioned to create a new work, transcribe an original one, translate another writer's work, or write for someone who is illiterate or inarticulate. In some cases, writing has been the only way an individual could earn an income. Frances Trollope is an example of women who wrote to save herself and her family from penury, at a time when there were very few socially acceptable employment opportunities for them. Her book about her experiences in the United States, called Domestic Manners of the Americans became a great success, "even though she was over fifty and had never written before in her life" after which "she continued to write hard, carrying this on almost entirely before breakfast". According to her writer son Anthony Trollope "her books saved the family from ruin".

Teach
Aristotle, who was tutor to Alexander the Great, wrote to support his teaching. He wrote two treatises for the young prince: "On Monarchy", and "On Colonies" and his dialogues also appear to have been written either "as lecture notes or discussion papers for use in his philosophy school at the Athens Lyceum between 334 and 323 BC." They encompass both his 'scientific' writings (metaphysics, physics, biology, meteorology, and astronomy, as well as logic and argument) the 'non-scientific' works (poetry, oratory, ethics, and politics), and "major elements in traditional Greek and Roman education".

Writers of textbooks also use writing to teach and there are numerous instructional guides to writing itself. For example, many people will find it necessary to make a speech "in the service of your company, church, civic club, political party, or other organization" and so, instructional writers have produced texts and guides for speechmaking.

Tell a story
Many writers use their skill to tell the story of their people, community or cultural tradition, especially one with a personal significance. Examples include Shmuel Yosef Agnon; Miguel Ángel Asturias; Doris Lessing; Toni Morrison; Isaac Bashevis Singer; and Patrick White. Writers such as Mario Vargas Llosa, Herta Müller, and Erich Maria Remarque write about the effect of conflict, dispossession and war.

Seek a lover
Writers use prose, poetry, and letters as part of courtship rituals. Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac, written in verse, is about both the power of love and the power of the self-doubting writer/hero's writing talent.

Pen names
Writers sometimes use a pseudonym, otherwise known as a pen name or "nom de plume". The reasons they do this include to separate their writing from other work (or other types of writing) for which they are known; to enhance the possibility of publication by reducing prejudice (such as against women writers or writers of a particular race); to reduce personal risk (such as political risks from individuals, groups or states that disagree with them); or to make their name better suit another language.

Examples of well-known writers who used a pen name include: George Eliot (1819–1880), whose real name was Mary Anne (or Marian) Evans; George Orwell (1903–1950), whose real name was Eric Blair; George Sand (1804–1876), whose real name was Lucile Aurore Dupin; Dr. Seuss (1904–1991), whose real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel; Stendhal (1783–1842), whose real name was Marie-Henri Beyle; and Mark Twain (1835–1910), whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

Apart from the large numbers of works attributable only to "Anonymous", there are a large number of writers who were once known and are now unknown. Efforts are made to find and re-publish these writers' works. One example is the publication of books like Japan As Seen and Described by Famous Writers (a 2010 reproduction of a pre-1923 publication) by "Anonymous". Another example is the founding of a Library and Study Centre for the Study of Early English Women's Writing in Chawton, England.

Fictional writers
Some fictional writers are very well known because of the strength of their characterization by the real writer or the significance of their role as writer in the plot of a work. Examples of this type of fictional writer include Edward Casaubon, a fictional scholar in George Eliot's Middlemarch, and Edwin Reardon, a fictional writer in George Gissing's New Grub Street. Casaubon's efforts to complete an authoritative study affect the decisions taken by the protagonists in Eliot's novel and inspire significant parts of the plot. In Gissing's work, Reardon's efforts to produce high quality writing put him in conflict with another character, who takes a more commercial approach. Robinson Crusoe is a fictional writer who was originally credited by the real writer (Daniel Defoe) as being the author of the confessional letters in the work of the same name. Bridget Jones is a comparable fictional diarist created by writer Helen Fielding. Both works became well-known and popular; their protagonists and story were developed further through many adaptations, including film versions. Cyrano de Bergerac was a real writer who created a fictional character with his own name. The Sibylline Books, a collection of prophecies were supposed to have been purchased from the Cumaean Sibyl by the last king of Rome. Since they were consulted during periods of crisis, it could be said that they are a case of real works created by a fictional writer.

Writers of sacred texts
Religious texts or scriptures are the texts which different religious traditions consider to be sacred, or of central importance to their religious tradition. Some religions and spiritual movements believe that their sacred texts are divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired, while others have individual authors.

Controversial writing
Skilled writers influence ideas and society, so there are many instances where a writer's work or opinion has been unwelcome and controversial. In some cases, they have been persecuted or punished. Aware that their writing will cause controversy or put themselves and others into danger, some writers self-censor; or withhold their work from publication; or hide their manuscripts; or use some other technique to preserve and protect their work. Two of the most famous examples are Leonardo da Vinci and Charles Darwin. Leonardo "had the habit of conversing with himself in his writings and of putting his thoughts into the clearest and most simple form". He used "left-handed or mirror writing" (a technique described as "so characteristic of him") to protect his scientific research from other readers. The fear of persecution, social disgrace, and being proved incorrect are regarded as contributing factors to Darwin's delaying the publication of his radical and influential work On the Origin of Species.

One of the results of controversies caused by a writer's work is scandal, which is a negative public reaction that causes damage to reputation and depends on public outrage. It has been said that it is possible to scandalise the public because the public "wants to be shocked in order to confirm its own sense of virtue". The scandal may be caused by what the writer wrote or by the style in which it was written. In either case, the content or the style is likely to have broken with tradition or expectation. Making such a departure may in fact, be part of the writer's intention or at least, part of the result of introducing innovations into the genre in which they are working. For example, novelist D H Lawrence challenged ideas of what was acceptable as well as what was expected in form. These may be regarded as literary scandals, just as, in a different way, are the scandals involving writers who mislead the public about their identity, such as Norma Khouri or Helen Darville who, in deceiving the public, are considered to have committed fraud.

Writers may also cause the more usual type of scandal – whereby the public is outraged by the opinions, behaviour or life of the individual (an experience not limited to writers). Poet Paul Verlaine outraged society with his behaviour and treatment of his wife and child as well as his lover. Among the many writers whose writing or life was affected by scandals are Oscar Wilde, Lord Byron, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and H. G. Wells. One of the most famously scandalous writers was the Marquis de Sade who offended the public both by his writings and by his behaviour.

Punishment
The consequence of scandal for a writer may be censorship or discrediting of the work, or social ostracism of its creator. In some instances, punishment, persecution, or prison follow. The list of journalists killed in Europe, list of journalists killed in the United States and the list of journalists killed in Russia are examples. Others include:
 * The Balibo Five, a group of Australian television journalists who were killed while attempting to report on Indonesian incursions into Portuguese Timor in 1975.
 * Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), an influential theologian who wrote The Cost of Discipleship and was hanged for his resistance to Nazism.
 * Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), who was sentenced to imprisonment for heresy as a consequence of writing in support of the then controversial theory of heliocentrism, although the sentence was almost immediately commuted to house arrest.
 * Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), who wrote political theory and criticism and was imprisoned for this by the Italian Fascist regime.
 * Günter Grass (1927–2015), whose poem "What Must Be Said" led to his being declared persona non grata in Israel.
 * Peter Greste (born 1965), a journalist who was imprisoned in Egypt for news reporting which was "damaging to national security."
 * Primo Levi (1919–1987) who, among many Jews imprisoned during World War II, wrote an account of his incarceration called If This Is a Man.
 * Sima Qian (145 or 135 BC – 86 BC) who "successfully defended a vilified master from defamatory charges" and was given "the choice between castration or execution." He "became a eunuch and had to bury his own book ... in order to protect it from the authorities."
 * Salman Rushdie (born 1947), whose novel The Satanic Verses was banned and burned internationally after causing such a worldwide storm that a fatwā was issued against him. Though Rushdie survived, numerous others were killed in incidents connected to the novel.
 * Roberto Saviano (born 1979), whose best-selling book Gomorrah provoked the Neapolitan Camorra, annoyed Silvio Berlusconi and led to him receiving permanent police protection.
 * Simon Sheppard (born 1957) who was imprisoned in the UK for inciting racial hatred.
 * Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), who used his experience of imprisonment as the subject of his writing in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Cancer Ward—the latter, while legally published in the Soviet Union, had to gain the approval of the USSR Union of Writers.
 * William Tyndale (c. 1494 – 1536), who was executed because he translated the Bible into English.

Protection and representation
The organisation Reporters Without Borders (also known by its French name: Reporters Sans Frontières) was set up to help protect writers and advocate on their behalf.

The professional and industrial interests of writers are represented by various national or regional guilds or unions. Examples include writers guilds in Australia and Great Britain and unions in Arabia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Canada, Estonia, Hungary, Ireland, Moldova, Philippines, Poland, Quebec, Romania, Russia, Sudan, and Ukraine. In the United States, there is both a writers guild and a National Writers Union.

Awards
There are many awards for writers whose writing has been adjudged excellent. Among them are the many literary awards given by individual countries, such as the Prix Goncourt and the Pulitzer Prize, as well as international awards such as the Nobel Prize in Literature. Russian writer Boris Pasternak (1890–1960), under pressure from his government, reluctantly declined the Nobel Prize that he won in 1958.

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Talk:Phrase structure rules

2002.03.21 I noticed the comment on the following change:

(diff) Phrase structure rules (3); 01:21. . . Karl E. V. Palmen; [link lexical class to part of speech (Please correct, if this is wrong)]

While this is useful, and I'm leaving it alone for that reason, I'm not entirely certain that part of speech is the same thing as "lexical class". The phrase "part of speech" hearkens back to my school years, where "Noun" was defined as "a person, place, or thing"; "Adjectives" and "Adverbs" were never clearly distinguished other than that adverbs can modify both verbs and adjectives; and weird terms such as "helping verbs" were used to describe certain common auxiliaries that happen to be verbs, without clearly relating them to auxiliaries that aren't derived from verbs (such as "to" in English infinitives).

The notion of "lexical class" is somewhat more precise, and at the same time, a bit blurrier, because lexical classes are defined by the syntactic role of and syntactic relationship between words and phrases, rather than by the "dictionary definition" of what part of speech a given word belongs to. It also better accounts for abstract nouns and irreal [my term, not linguistic jargon] verbs (such as "to be" when used as a copula).

Certainly the two overlap and intersect. Whether (or to what degree) they are the same is something I'd like to see discussed.

Where's a specialist in syntax when you need one? *grin*

--pgdudda

"Colorless green ideas..." example
Has anyone noticed that "colorles green ideas..." phrase may be parsed in more than one way? "Colorless green" is a pretty valid color to my tastes :-) Mikkalai 07:13, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * True, in fact Chomsky mentions this sort of thing in passing: "...it seems that interpretations are imposed on [these kinds of sentences] by virtue of analogies that they bear to nondeviant sentences" (Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, p 76), so he does not deny that they may have interpretations. I think that the meaning you derive is based on a very creative process which may not have anything to do with the meaning of the word "colorless" itself. So in order to make sense of this senseless phrase, you can interpret it as an ironic statement -- a green so boring that it barely counts as a color at all. But I think we would want a theory of semantics to tell us that "colorless green" is literally meaningless, because there are really no limits on the meanings you can give to a sentence if you are allowed to interpret contradictions as ironies, or that sort of thing. That's not to say that any interpretation of a literally meaningless sentence using this sort of method is "wrong" in some way, I just don't think it's part of semantics (maybe part of pragmatics, though). --Cadr

 * I re-added the example sentence which was deleted by Skal while leaving no note here and doing this with a remark (Improving the article) in the change log. I think he should tell us more why he thinks that deleting the example improves the article. Hirzel 19:07, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Open issues
Hirzel 19:30, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Expand the article
 * Give a better account of the historical setting and the use today.
 * Make the article consistent
 * Which sense has the third rule (esp. when referring to AP?

Merge?
I'm sorry about the deletions that I made last August (referred to above—my username is Skal). I would take it upon myself to fix the damage I've done to what was otherwise a reasonably good article, were it not for the fact that this article is probably superfluous. I see little in this article (even as it was before I mutilated it) that is not there in the article on Phrase structure grammar (which redirects to Chomsky hierarchy). Even what little is (or was) here that is not there rightly belongs to that page. Therefore, I suggest that this page be merged with Phrase structure grammar. Any thoughts?

By the way, should Phrase structure grammar redirect to Chomsky hierarchy? It's been a while since I last read a book on syntax, but it may be useful to have a separate article detailing each of the concepts, as I believe that phrase structure grammar and Chomsky hierarchy are not the same thing.--Siva 20:42, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree that this article should merge with phrase structure grammar, and that the PSG article should de-merge with the Chomsky hierarchy article. PSG and the Chomsky hierarchy are different enough concepts to merit their own respective articles.  On a practical level, the easiest thing to do is to move this article to PSG and have phrase structure rules redirect to PSG.  Then we can expand this current article to treat both topics.  –jonsafari 18:23, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

table content how to detetmine phrase structure
syntax 213.55.89.117 (talk) 14:18, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Phrase structure rules


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User:Kimberlyhogg

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