[Policy] Helmet policy - formatting style notes (and more)

[Laura Donatelli]

[I suspect that Gord will not have access to his work email for a couple of weeks as he is away now on holidays, so I don't think we should hold this up for his return.]


Bill, Thank you so much for your careful work on this.  Well done and I really appreciate your formatting skills and keen eye!


A few comments highlighted in yellow below.


Ian, If I haven't seen an email from you by tomorrow, I will try to give you a call to discuss this by phone.

Cheers, Laura

________________________________
From: Policy <policy-bounces at lists.bikewinnipeg.ca> on behalf of Bill Newman <bill.newman at plumdee.ca>
Sent: January 25, 2017 4:33 PM
To: BW Policy
Subject: [Policy] Helmet policy - formatting style notes (and more)

    I've re-formatted the References section with a style that I think would be useful for us to adopt.  There are no hard and fast rules--this is just similar to what a lot of people use.  I quite like your revised reference citing in the text and Reference section.

    The Reference Section is a numbered list in the same order the documents are referenced in the text.  Each item look like this:
Author name, another author, "Title of the work Date1", Publisher or Source, Date2
There should be a date of some sort.  It may be part of the title (Date1) or it may be the publication date (Date2).

    In the body of the text I've put numbers in parentheses after the first mention of the document or maybe the first quote from it.  The number needn't be repeated unless the same work is quoted in some other part of the text.  (note that it appears after the period.) My only concern with this is reference (2) which comes in the middle of a two-sentence quote.  Should it not go at the end of the quotation?  The number could be a superscript but they may a little harder to create and a little harder to notice if you are looking backwards from the list to where it was referenced in the body.

    I've applied a "text body" style for the paragraphs which specifies a reasonable space between paragraphs.  This was previously done by putting  a blank paragraph between each paragraph (not the word processing way:-) Great!
    I've also applied a heading style--larger font and bold.  (Do the first two paragraphs need a heading ? ? ) Upon reflection, we could introduce these paragraphs with the heading "Background:"

    The first referenced document, by Carpenter & Stehr, was mentioned in the third paragraph of the Rationale section but is gone now.  I've left it out.  (It also seemed to be from an unlikely source and not very interesting. --IMHO)  Given that Ian was the primary author, I think it should be his call if the Carpenter and Stehr reference is important enough to be included.  (NB, this was referred to in the 2nd, not 3rd paragraph in Rationale.) If included, I assume it would be shown as reference (2) and all the other references would increase one number.

    I had to create the citation for Public Health Ontario, it was missing.  Good on you for catching this!
    There are three extra references that were not used in the text.  I left them in.

    The article by D.L. Robinson is really excellent.  She cites many surveys and includes some very significant graphs--much more than we can probably afford to include here.
    There were a couple of small errors: the numbers quoted were for Melbourne and the law was for all of Australia.  Good catch.
    But I've also rewritten that paragraph and included it, indented, after the original.  I don't think I've changed what you meant to say Ian, but you will have to decide.  Go ahead and delete one of them. (Ask me how to remove the indents:-)  I prefer Bill's revised alternative paragraph.  Ian, what do you think?

    This turned out to be more work than I thought but I think it looks good now,......

I spotted two other minor typos: in the last sentence before the Conclusion, the word "health" should not be capitalized; and in the Conclusion 4th sentence, it should be "low-speed impact" with a hyphen.

    (Well not really.  I still think the sentence "Bike Winnipeg encourages people of all ages who ride bicycles to wear helmets so as to reduce their chances of head injury while riding a bicycle." is too strong.  Bill, I appreciate your strong convictions here but also recognize that the board has a variety of perspectives on this.  Could we change this slightly to: "Bike Winnipeg encourages people of all ages who ride bicycles to consider wearing helmets so as to reduce their chances of head injury while riding a bicycle."?

Because:

  *   We see the helmet law as reducing mode share.
  *   There are a significant number of people who would rather quit cycling than pack a helmet everywhere.
  *   We want them back.
  *   We must respect their choice.
  *   Everyone should consider a helmet and make their own choice.

If we say the non-helmet people are wrong and need correction, the legislators will offer us a nifty little law smack them in line.
    Not to be-labour the point, of course :-) :-)

    --Bill
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