Wikipedia:Peer review/French presidential election referendum, 1962/archive1

French presidential election referendum, 1962

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I wonder whether it is intelligible by people who are not knowledgeable about French institutional history.

Thanks, David.Monniaux (talk) 11:53, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is generally clear to me, but I have a few suggestions.

Lead

• MOS:INTRO says in part, "The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article." A good rule of thumb is to include at least a mention of each of the main text sections. The existing lead says nothing about the controversy and doesn't mention de Gaulle.
• Dates like October 26, 1962, are no longer autoformatted (linked).

Controversy

• The embedded link to an external source, "official translation" in the hatnote should be turned into an in-line citation.
• "This was unsurprising: from 1958 to 1970, under Charles de Gaulle's presidency, was sometimes described as a "cannon aimed at Parliament", protecting the executive branch against encroachment by Parliament; all referrals except Monnerville's single came from the Prime Minister, who always got a ruling of partial unconstitutionality." - This sentence is problematic on several counts. Does "cannon" refer to the council? The direct quotation, "cannon aimed at Parliament" needs a source immediately after the punctuation (comma) at the end of the quote. "Monnerville's single" should probably be expressed as "the one from Monnerville". What does it mean to say that a proposed law is partly unconstitutional? Does that always mean that the proposal can become law?

Results

• The "official proclamation" is another embedded link to an external site that should be turned into an in-line citation.

General

• Reference tags should be placed immediately after the punctuation at the end of sourced material rather than before the punctuation.
• Much of the article is written in passive voice. It would be stronger in active voice, and many of the passive constructions would be easy to change to active. For example, the first sentence of the "Change" section now says, "In the Third and Fourth Republic, the President of the Republic had been elected by Parliament." It could be flipped and tightened to say, "During the Third and Fourth Republic, Parliament elected the president." The next sentence in this section begins, "In the 1958 constitution of the Fifth Republic, the president was elected by an electoral college... ". You could write this as, "However, the 1958 constitution of the Fifth Republic required an electoral college to elect the president... ". You might look for other constructions that could be flipped from passive to active, which often takes fewer words and is more direct and clear.
• Words like "president" and "constitution" are normally lower-cased unless part of a formal title.

I hope these few suggestions prove helpful. Finetooth (talk) 19:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)