1. menus and recipe writing

11. ENCYCLOPEDIAS AND ENCYCLOPEDIC ARTICLES. HOW TO READ AND WRITE THEM.
To write an effective encyclopedia entry, you have to be able to distinguish between the important and the merely interesting, and you always, always have to keep your audience in mind. More often than not, you’re audience is going to be someone who doesn’t know a whole lot about a given topic and is turning to you to tell them why the topic is important. Aim to give them the key facts they need to know to get a broad understanding of the topic, and if space allows, point them towards useful resources to learn more.
It may be helpful to begin the process with a short “freewriting” session. Open a blank document or grab a fresh sheet of paper and spend a few minutes jotting down what you already know about the topic. Once you’ve purged out all those thoughts, look at what you’ve got in front of you, and then spend a couple minutes noting down things you don’t know or need to check.

The nice thing about this process is that the first things that come to your mind are often exactly those big-picture issues you’ll need to tackle in your article.

Once you feel like you’ve got a good handle on what you know and don’t know, start your basic research. Focus on big-picture facts and figures first. You will inevitably need to look up more items throughout the process.
Define & Outline
Writers are often said to fall into two categories: plotters, and ‘pantsers.’ Plotters carefully outline their writing before they even start their first draft; pantsers just wing it.
When it comes to a short, structured piece of writing like an encyclopedia article, I strongly urge you to be a plotter.
I begin with the most basic of outlines: defining the 3-5 main sections of my topic. For example, a biographical entry may look like this:
Overview/significance
Early life
Early career
Mid-career / Challenges
Later life
Alternatively, an encyclopedia entry on the Great Depression might look like this:
Overview/significance
Causes
Social and Economic Impacts (Unemployment, poverty, hunger, etc.)
Response (The New Deal)
Recovery (World War II)
Lasting Impacts
While it’s a good idea to look at encyclopedia entries on the same topic to get a get an idea of what they cover, you should plan on offering a more in-depth discussion than a typical entry in Encyclopedia Britannica.
Use whatever outlining method works best for you. Quite often, you will identify some area where you may need to do a bit more thinking or researching before moving on to the next step.
Research
There will likely be several journal articles and books on the topic you’re writing about. Find free and reputable sources that offer offer a broad overview of the topic and then synthesize these in different sections. For the origins of the Great Depression, for instance, read other encyclopedia entries on the topic and find journal articles, books, and book reviews that analyze this topic.
Make sure to keep track of all the articles you read by writing a citation in a Word document or a notepad and then writing a few notes about how it could fit into your outline. Don’t go overboard with notes, however. If there are several different interpretations about a topic –there usually will be — make sure you briefly note this and briefly discuss it in your encyclopedia entry.
One thing to avoid when writing an encyclopedia entry is going to far into your research in any topic or subtopic. There will inevitably be several areas that are contested or uncertain and it’s your job to give give a brief overview of these areas of uncertainty or contestation.
It’s important to remember that you’re primarily writing for someone just learning about this topic, not the seasoned scholar. There is always more you can write about some aspect of a topic, but your job is to paint a broad picture.