Wikipedia:Peer review/Samuel Johnson/archive1

Samuel Johnson

• 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 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because its Samuel Johnson, and, well, he needed a lot of work, and I just came on to add citations. I'm sure there are others with important skills that can contribute or recommend the much needed work to actually make this a decent page.

Thanks, Ottava Rima (talk) 22:40, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Comments by Ceoil

Initial, brief comments: (more later when I've read it!)

• Opening does not establish nationality.
• Third para: "his biography. Biographies..." ( Ceoil ^sláinte 23:19, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Just some minor notes - I can add England after Staffordshire if needed. I removed the whole "English" note as possibly being too point of view or not "encyclopedic". Also, he is known for Boswell's biography, which should probably be added before biography (few pay attention to his other biographies outside of academia). :) Ottava Rima (talk) 23:47, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Comments from SG

Where it started. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:47, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

It burns usssss, burns usss. :) Ottava Rima (talk) 03:04, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Should it be written in British English? Check throughout.

Lots of WP:MOS#Ellipses and WP:PUNC logical punctuation needed.

Please avoid POV language about neurological disorders (I know it is common in British English to say a person "suffers" from a condition, but that is offensive in the USA).

I can't delink the date templates in the opening; someone should ping Tony1.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:09, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

It can be typed in manually. Also, those elipses, dashes, and the rest don't show up as anything special on my computer, so I can't tell when they are which. I spent three hours trying to copy and paste your dashes the one day to fix the rest only to realize that it didn't pick up anything different on this computer. Fun, isn't it? :D Ottava Rima (talk) 00:52, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, well, I got a lot of it; after you go to GA (they don't care), you can ask User:Epbr123 to do a final check. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:53, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Some at GA care. ;-) --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 01:02, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

But in the sense that full MoS compliance isn't part of the criteria there, no? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:07, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

It isn't no, but GA is definitely getting tougher. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 02:59, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Uncited paragraph in "Character sketch"; needs to be cited or removed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:09, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I didn't even notice it. I think the Legacy section should be removed also. How did I miss that?! Ottava Rima (talk) 01:49, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Comments from Malleus

I'm really pleased to see this article being developed, but it obviously needs a lot of work even to get to GA. For instance:

• "He most likely lived with his parents and suffered mentally anguish."

• "... he began to project to create an annotated edition of Poliziano's Latin poems ...".

• "During the decade he worked on the Dictionary, and the living conditions for Johnson and Tetty were miserable from Johnson having to employ multiple assistants for copying or mechanical work."

• "... when he was given word that Mrs Thrale that she would sell the residence...".

I could go on and on pointing out examples of where this article needs work, but probably better to try and help fix it. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 02:59, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I was more concerned with rewriting to meet citations. Unlike Christopher Smart, I used the previous work to base a lot of the new language on, so it caused a lot of linguistic problems. Also, my eyes started to burn after a while. I'll perform a complete read through right now. :) Ottava Rima (talk) 03:04, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

comment from DGG

This too is just preliminary--it will take a few days to examine carefully enough. Just for the first section.

1. The manner of starting from the pre-existing article has caused a good deal of inconsistencies: the first one I saw was "is best known for his writing" in the lede, and in the immediately following para., " he is best known from James Boswell's biography of him"
2. The para on the merits of the various bios should probably be after, not before, the bio itself. There are other contemp. bios to deal with besides Boswell, and a proper discussion of the nature of BLOJ is needed, at length--in the contexts of the extensive bio material on SJ from JB's diaries.
3. SJ's education: his interview at admission needs fuller discussion, including SJ's own later comment on it; I do not understand: "Michael Johnson allowed his son to take a hundred of his clients from his bookshop" clients? ; that the Univ. refused to give him a MA initially needs to be mentioned.
4. Early life "It is believed that something happened during this period to cause Johnson to remain quiet about these years" is a remarkably meaningless sentence.
5. Tone: "job" for his teaching positions , is used consistently -- and wrongly.
6. .His school--there are some good anecdotes to be added there, especially of Garrick's spying on him with Letty. I'd add the text of his advertisement for it.
7. General remarks on citations: they are too dense. When a group of facts of his life are taken from a partic. source, the individ. sentences do not ed individual citations. And, for a literary subject like this, either Harvard of MLA style is more suitable than the obtrusive Wikipedia fashion of superior links.
8. "During the Dictionary" as a heading is not English.
9. The interview with the King could well be a section of its own. The "compliment fit for a king to make" should be added in full.
10. The discussion of his illnesses is very circumspect with respect to his depression, considering the material available from Hester Thrale.
11. As for the list of major works, it should be a list of all his works. Some of the ones that do not have articles of his own are impt. enough to deserve them; his ed. of Shakespeare , for example, as a work of criticism.
12. Skipping to the general references, Johnsonian Miscellanies" is not a work by Johnson, but a collection of material about Johnson.

As for overall organisation, other major topical subdivisions are needed, at least for his politics, his literary criticism. And certainly a very important section on the history of later critical views of SJ.

I agree with the comment that there is a great deal of work to do before this is ready for GA. I'll be glad to take a hand. At the moment, too many different people are trying to rewrite simultaneously. I suggest we take it in turns. DGG (talk) 00:10, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

The Garrick quote about his experience at Johnson's school is one of the Boswell quotations listed on the talk page. No one mentioned it to me so I didn't add it. :) I'm making corrections now. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:25, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Another tiny note, this and most of the books that I have cite Johnson as the author of the miscellanies because of the majority of the works included being written by him (except works like Thrale/Piozzi's). Thats why I cited it under Johnson (it could be "Johnson et al". Ottava Rima (talk) 00:32, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Contents of JM --see vol.1 , page xiii-xiv+, and vol.2, p.v-vii -- it's cat. by libraries under Johnson because the first work in the set is SJ's "Prayers and Meditations" (not his title--a posthumous collection). Don't confuse the conventions of library cataloging with bibliography. DGG (talk) 00:39, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Lane cites the work as "Hill, G. Birkbeck, editor". Changed to reflect that. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:50, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Comment by John Carter

Only things that comes to mind immediately not stated already is that the lead is too short for an article of this length. Also, I have to question the use of the phrase "mental state" in the lead. Something a bit clearer would be welcome there. I will do a more thorough review hopefully by the end of the day. John Carter (talk) 14:29, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree and put up a small addition. It still needs more. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:28, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Comments by karanacs

These are the first half of my comments. I've read through the section A Dictionary and will finish the rest soon.

• This sentence seems awkward to me "On coming of age he attended Pembroke College, Oxford for a year, before being forced to leave because he could not afford to support himself there"
• This seems out of place in the lead: "During this time, he met James Boswell along with Henry Thrale and Hester Thrale, arguably the three most important people in Johnson's later life". That doesn't really tell me anything about why they were important to him, and at this point in my reading it seems like the line should be lef out.
• Watch for duplicated wikilinks. Both Boswell and Hester Thrale are wikilinked twice in the lead. However, the first instance in the body of the article should be wikilinked, and neither Boswell nor his book is wikilinked in first sentence of Biography.
• Boswell's book is referred to once as "Life of Johnson" and once as "Life of Samuel Johnson"
• "began with a well-organized press campaign, by Boswell and his friends, of puffing and of denigration of his rivals; and was given a boost by one of Macaulay's most memorable pieces of journalistic claptrap" - I don't know who Macaulay is, and is the denigration of his rivals referring to those of Boswell or Johnson?
• Is it really important that we learn that Michael Johnson had a broken engagement? If it is, perhaps rephrase so that there is not as much emphasis on it, something along the lines of " Michael was the first bookseller of "reputation" in the community, and when he was 40 opened a parchment factory which produced book bindings. Nine years later, in 1706, he married 37-year-old Sarah Ford, daughter of Cornelius Ford, from a middle-class milling and farming family. It was Michael's first marriage, as his previous engagement to Mary Neild had been broken."
  • Overall, I think the prose could definitely be tightened. While I don't see much that is grammatically incorrect, there is a lot of fluff in the phrasing. A tighter form of prose often makes for a better read.
• "recommended that the young Johnson should be "touched",[16] which he was by Queen Anne on 30 March 1712, at St James's Palace" - I read a lot about English royalty so I know what this means, but I suspect a lot of readers will be confused. Is there a wikilink to help? If not, this will need to be explained, either in a footnote or the text.
• Do we know who performed the operation?
• "He was promoted to the upper school at the age of nine" - is that normal or was that an early promotion?
• "life at the school was not a complete loss" - phrasing seems a tad over-dramatic
• "with Cornelius Ford, the son of his mother's brother, named after Johnson's grandfather" - probably not necessary to reiterate that he was named after Johnson's grandfather
• "thought that Ford's knowledge of the classics was employed during this time for the betterment of his cousin" - what is this trying to say?
• "However, Ford was a notorious alcoholic whose excesses contributed to his death, six years after Johnson's visit, in mid-August 1731" - the bit about his death seems misplaced here, in the article about Johnson, unless there is something about it that affected Johnson.
  • I see that this is explained better later in the article. I think the reference should be removed in the early part of the article and just be in the Early career mentions.
• Why was Johnson not allowed to continue at grammar school?
• and what changed their minds that he was about to go back 6 months later?
• "member of Pembroke" - what does this mean?
• "Michael Johnson allowed his son to take a hundred books from his bookshop, at a great cost to himself." - I assume this means that Samuel was allowed to sell these books? Perhaps this could be made more clear,
• "which caused Johnson significant embarrassment.[46] This was to be unnecessary" - This doesn't flow well. It sounds like the embarrassment was unnecessary, when I think the article means Michael Johnson's praise was unnecessary.
• Practically every reference to Jorden includes "his tutor". If it is necessary to spell that out, the article can probably leave out the "Jorden" completely and just use "his tutor".
• Example of other prose issues: "Besides being poor, the journey became worse when Johnson received word that his brother, Nathaniel, had died when they first began their trip to London" - these two clauses don't really belong in one sentence.
• "déterré" - unfortunately, not a word I learned in French class. What does it mean?
• Need an explanation in the article about why Gower would write to Swift about a degree from Dublin (and why no wikilink to Swift?)
• The information about Johnson's opinion of Swift seems out of place here.
• What makes Life of Savage "one of the innovative works in ths history of biography?"
• The Dictionary section begins with two paragraph discussing the importance of Johnson's Dictionary, but at this point in the article an uninformed reader doesn't know that Johnson wrote a Dictionary. I think this should be rewritten or reorganizaed a bit. Perhaps begin the section with the first three sentences of the third paragraph, which talks about Johnson's getting the contract. Then use the first two paragraph, then combine the rest of the third paragraph with the fourth paragraph.

Karanacs (talk) 14:21, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I made various corrections of the above here. I changed everything except for the direct quotes (Greene's comments about Boswell, and Bate's claim about Life of Savage - both will probably be cut completely). Hopefully, by posting this, I didn't screw you up if you were in the middle of finishing. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:55, 21 July 2008 (UTC)