Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/January 17, 2016

Discussion of reverted edits

• "age of 17 to 19": "age 17 to 19" is tighter
• "Though not as critically acclaimed as her first autobiography": "Though" is a signal that this clause is of less importance, or will be mitigated in some way by what follows. That's not what I want to say; the second autobiography is generally considered inferior to the first, and that's the main takeaway.
• "; some critics found this structure unsatisfactory.": The "but" that was removed seems to me to work; it says, "it may have been intentional, but it didn't work as intended". If that isn't clear, I'm open to suggestions. - Dank (push to talk) 06:35, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Just for clarity, this is what I started editing:

Gather Together in My Name (1974) is a memoir by African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou, the second of her seven autobiographies. The narrative follows Rita (Angelou) from the ages of 17 to 19 as she becomes closer to her mother and tries to provide for her young son, but ultimately descends into a life of crime and misery. It expands on many of the themes from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, including motherhood and family, race and racism, identity, and education and literacy. Like many of Angelou's autobiographies, Gather Together describes her ongoing self-education. It was not as critically acclaimed as her first autobiography but is considered better written, and it received mostly positive reviews. The book's title comes from the Bible, Matthew 18:19-20, and is meant to evoke loving relationships, in which adults can be honest with their children about their past. Consisting of a series of episodes loosely tied together by theme and content, the book intentionally parallels the chaos of adolescence, but some critics found this structure unsatisfactory.

There is a frank grammatical error (ages of 17 to 19) -- I agree age 17 to 19 is preferable -- as well as a missing en rule (18:19-20). Additionally I continue to find both the sentences "It was not as critically acclaimed as her first autobiography but is considered better written, and it received mostly positive reviews." & "Consisting of a series of episodes loosely tied together by theme and content, the book intentionally parallels the chaos of adolescence, but some critics found this structure unsatisfactory." poorly expressed. The first is just convoluted. The second feels grammatically wrong to me without a semi-colon; I could live with "Consisting of a series of episodes loosely tied together by theme and content, the book intentionally parallels the chaos of adolescence; however, some critics found this structure unsatisfactory." but I know some editors hate "however". Espresso Addict (talk) 10:41, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Espresso, I'm glad you're interested in the TFA summaries, I certainly enjoy writing them. I deduce that you may be a BrEng speaker, and I'm always glad to get BrEng feedback, because I'm not a native speaker of BrEng. I'm completely on board with making any article, including AmEng articles, natural-sounding for Brits, as long as the article also sounds natural to whoever it's primarily written for. Let's see if I can convince you, and if not, let's move the discussion to WT:FAC and see what others think.

• A Google Books search shows that "ages of" is common in this context in American English ... and the first hit is, wait for it, Gather Together in My Name. (There's an argument that it's not grammatical, but my personal belief is that "from the ages of" developed over time on analogy with "between the ages of".) I prefer to leave what the article writers have done alone if it works in the context of a TFA summary, but like you, I personally prefer age 17 to 19 in AmEng. ("aged" has become dominant in BritEng over the past century.)
• What does "though" mean to you?
• I haven't found any treatment of grammar, including what's usually called Cambridge grammar, that disallows the "but" in the last sentence; do you have a reference or link that would help me understand the point? - Dank (push to talk) 15:47, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Dank -- indeed, Brit here. To my ear (and I worked for decades as a copy editor), "from the ages of A to B" is wrong; "from the age of A to B" or "between the ages of A and B" would both be ok. Is this really different in formal US English?

"from the age of 17 to" gets only around 5k hits, and scanning quickly, I'm not impressed with the prose quality in most of those hits. (A similar link with "ages" above gets about 25K hits.) - Dank (push to talk) 18:19, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

I use "though" as a synonym of "although."

"Consisting of a series of episodes loosely tied together by theme and content, the book intentionally parallels the chaos of adolescence, but some critics found this structure unsatisfactory."

Hmm. What feels to be incorrect is that "some critics found this structure unsatisfactory" is referring back not to the subject of the first main clause ("the book") but to the modifier, ie "series of episodes". I think it's just the complexity of the sentence structure that necessitates either a semicolon or reordering the clauses. Turning the order around to say something like "The book's structure, a series of episodes loosely tied together by theme and content, intentionally parallels the chaos of adolescence, and some critics found this unsatisfactory." would also work for me. ETA: Looking at the lead of the article, this is much closer to how it is expressed there. Espresso Addict (talk) 17:25, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Okay, any longtime copy editor is a precious resource around here ... but I don't have a good sense of your style yet (because you and I agree on most points, apparently). Let's try this: Chris has just scheduled TFAs for the 1st through the 6th that I haven't done yet. If you've got some spare time and you're interested in TFA, pick any one of them that isn't AmEng, and summarize it in around 1150 characters (visible characters and spaces, not wikitext). This discussion we're having now would be easier for me if I knew something about your writing style. - Dank (push to talk) 17:55, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

On the second two questions: in both cases, I made stylistic choices that aren't my usual choices (as you'll know if you follow TFA), for complicated reasons that I don't normally have to deal with. If we're going to work together, these two points wouldn't be my choice for the first two things we debate; let's find common ground first. - Dank (push to talk) 18:19, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Feel free to tackle the TFAs on the 4th or the 6th, if you have a chance to get to it today. Brian and Chris like for me to get these done and get the notices out quickly, so I'll jump on it around midnight your time if you don't have time. Btw, I've been putting together a new project today that will need a lot of input from copy editors ... please keep an eye on WT:TFA for the announcement, and consider yourself invited in advance. - Dank (push to talk) 20:06, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I try to stick within my areas of expertise – microbiology, medicine, molecular biology, pharmacology (and to a lesser extent, most areas of biology), scientific/medical publishing, protected areas eg national parks, British literature, classical music, British architecture, British geography, feminism, British art – and I'd be happy to take a first cut at anything falling within those areas, if you ping me. I'll look out for the announcement of the new project. Regards, Espresso Addict (talk) 10:58, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Got it ... we've got plenty of all of those. I'll give you a bunch, and we'll see how it goes. - Dank (push to talk) 14:41, 19 January 2016 (UTC) P.S. No need to keep watching this page, but I do have one request, I'll drop by your talk page. - Dank (push to talk) 14:44, 19 January 2016 (UTC)