Wikijunior talk:Biology/Introduction

"Living things can move"
What about plants? Sure, they can grow, but... —Internoob (Disc·Cont·Wikt) 22:02, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * From my experience battling the underbrush at the edge of our lawn, I have no problem with this. See tropism.  --Pi zero (talk) 22:34, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay. I added something to the page so that readers are not confused, because I was even confused at that, and I'm beyond the age of the target audience. —Internoob (Disc·Cont·Wikt) 23:47, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
 * It seemed to me that footnotes are a more sophisticated way of organizing information than is typical of this book, so I've tried moving the explanation from its position as a footnote to an indented parenthetical directly below the item. I think it works okay there without wrecking the coherence of the list of seven statements.  --Pi zero (talk) 01:31, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm a biologist getting my masters...and I really think that this would mislead the intended audience. In fact, it is misleading to anyone. Because not all living things satisfy all of those marks and a lot of non-living things satisfy one or more of them. Just my two cents. Especially the "change and grow" and "excrete" parts. In fact, under these definitions, I would say viruses count as living things. Wraith313 (discuss • contribs) 14:21, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

English grammar, poor completeness.
I gave "poor" for presentation because words were used in a confusing way.

In modern American usage, we use "can" much more than is necessary, and doing so greatly decreases the significance of the word as well as introduces ambiguity. Mind you, just because it's done that way does not mean that it's correct, and that's because it indeed introduces ambiguity. Although this is a children's book, accuracy is still paramount, both in information content as well as usage and presentation.

It is better to say "Living things excrete" than "living things can excrete," especially when followed by a statement such as "cars etc. are not alive because they do not satisfy these seven..." The use of the word "can" introduces a contradictory possibility, and is confusing. In other words, it would be better to say either "living things excrete" or more appropriately but, however, in not such a dumbed-down fashion to which we are most accustomed in America, "all living things must excrete" or "the key properties of living things are that ... they must excrete." But in summary, the use of "can" is frankly incorrect.

I gave "fair" to completeness because viruses were not included. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.138.84.210 (discuss • contribs) 13:15, 6 September 2011