Talk:Marine Gate

A fact from Marine Gate appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 4 November 2013 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Marine Gate (pictured) was the most bombed building in Brighton during World War II, but only one resident—a Hollywood child star—died?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2013/November.

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Congratulations on a DYK!

However, there's a matter of expression.

The following sentence conveys a huge amount of information.

The International/Modern-style building is situated in a prominent clifftop position at the eastern entrance to Brighton. Its proximity to a large gasworks resulted in it being damaged by bombs several times during World War II, to the extent that it was Brighton's most bombed building.

First complete sentence:

Style of building
Location in landscape
Location in town

semi-colon

and here is the second edition of a very long train:

Proximity to industry
Historic events
Analysis of events

I cannot make the point more forcefully that semi-colons are the most abused item of punctuation on Wikipedia. Their use almost always amounts to bad expression.

Here we have two complete sentences, each containing a considerable amount of detail. They are not closely related, regardless of the fact that they are both about the building. They do belong in the same paragraph, but they don't belong in the same sentence, strung together like a train.

In point of fact, the second sentence is one of the major points of the article. It doesn't belong as a tagline to anything.

As a general rule, if the semi-colon is not being used to convey a point, then it is best not used at all.

As a link, it works in short, pithy, balanced or contradictory statements:

"Some people praise the building's architecture; others find it ugly." carries more impact than "Some people consider this a fine piece of architecture while others find it ugly." or "While some people praise the building's architecture, others find it ugly."

Amandajm (talk) 03:28, 4 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for making those changes. I have a habit of overusing semicolons, as you may have noticed! It looks much better now. Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 09:00, 4 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Marine Gate / Marine Court

Is this building the same as Marine Court? ref; [1]. I'm confused. 86.138.69.64 (talk) 08:43, 4 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

They are quite similar, and date from the same era, but they're not the same. Marine Court is in St Leonards-on-Sea, further along the coast. I'll check if there is an article about it on WP. Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 08:56, 4 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for clearing that up. 86.138.69.64 (talk) 11:31, 4 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]