Wikipedia:Peer review/Brisingr/archive1

Brisingr

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for July 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I'm soon taking it to GAN and I need comments on the prose and stuff like that. Thanks, Theleftorium 09:43, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is in pretty good shape. I have a few suggestions about prose and Manual of Style issues.

Lead

• "a group who governed the fictional continent of Alagaësia... " - "group that" rather than "group who"? A group is literally an "it".

Setting and characters

• "a group who governed Alagaësia in past times but were almost destroyed... " - "group that"?
• "Brisingr is told in first-person from the perspectives of multiple primary protagonist characters." - Tighten slightly to "Brisingr is told in first-person from the perspectives of multiple primary protagonists." Also, wikilink protagonists?
• "return as the primary antagonists" - Wikilink antagonists?
• "and the Shade Varaug also" - To a reader unfamiliar with the books, "Shade Varaug" appears to be a single thing wikilinked once. But clicking reveals that Shade and Veraug are linked separately. A more clear way to handle these compounds is to re-cast like this: "and Varaug, a Shade,... " so that the two links don't look like one.
• "Many minor protagonist characters reprise their roles... " - Tighten by deleting "characters"?

Background

• "sold over fifteen million copies worldwide together" - Numbers from one to nine are usually written as words, while bigger numbers are usually written as digits. I'd suggest changing this to "sold over 15 million copies worldwide together" with a non-breaking space WP:NBSP between 15 and million to prevent separation on line-break. The nbsp should be added to 2.5 million slightly further down in the article and to any similar constructions. There are quite a few later in the article.
• "He turned away from his computer to get it off his back and began writing on parchment paper... " - Slang. This could be fixed by deleting "to get it off his back".
• "Parts of the story are told through Saphira's point of view... " - "from" rather than "through"?
• "The word "brisingr" is an ancient Old Norse word meaning "fire",[10][4][9]... " - When a string of citations like this occur, the convention is to arrange them in ascending order, thus: [4][9][10]. Ditto for any similar string in the article.
• The second of the long quotes in this section is five lines long on my computer screen. MOS:QUOTE says in part, "A long quote (more than four lines, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of number of lines) is formatted as a block quotation, which Wikimedia's software will indent from both margins. Block quotes are not enclosed in quotation marks... "

Title, covers, and audio book

• "Since they did not want the same cover... " - "They" seems to refer to "Japanese" but doesn't because "Japanese" in the preceding sentence means "Japanese language". Thus, you might better replace "they" with "The Japanese".
• "Paolini himself made drawings based on the book for the deluxe edition of Brisingr, including one with Eragon's arm and hand holding the sword he receives in the book, named Brisingr, with flames around the blade." - Dangling modifer, I think. Was the sword named Brisingr as well as the book? Suggestion: "Paolini himself made drawings based on the book for the deluxe edition of Brisingr, including one with Eragon's arm and hand holding the sword he receives in the book. The sword, named Brisingr, has flames around the blade." I'd also suggest tightening by deleting "himself" and "based on the book".

References

• The dates in the citations should be consistently formatted. They don't have to be in the same format as the dates in the main text (although they can be), but they can't be mixed. All should either be yyyy-mm-dd or m-d-y.

General

• The dabfinder tool that lives here finds a link that goes to a disambiguation page rather than its intended target.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 20:07, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Further Finetooth comment

• In the "Promotion and release" section, you might link spoiler and maybe rune. Finetooth (talk) 20:15, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

• Thank you for the review, I really appreciate it! As for your comment on the dates, {{cite web}} and {{cite news}} automatically uses the yyyy-mm-dd format for access dates. All my FAs and GAs uses both m-d-y and yyyy-mm-dd in the references so I don't think that will be a problem. Thanks again! Theleftorium 20:38, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

You are welcome, and I'm glad to help. The guidelines about the date formatting live at WP:MOSNUM#Format consistency. If you prefer yyyy-mm-dd for any reason, you can make them all conform to that in the citations (but not in the main text). The date formatting in the citations does not have to match the date formatting in the main text. You might be able to slip a mixed batch of citation dates through a GA review, but I doubt that it would survive at FAC. Finetooth (talk) 00:01, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I see what you mean now. All taken care of. Thanks again! Theleftorium 21:43, 31 July 2009 (UTC)