User talk:Pratim from Lakhuria

Copy edit reviews

Hello, Pratim from Lakhuria! I've reviewed your first two copy edits for the August 2017 blitz. Let me say that copy editing can be demanding work. It requires a lot of attention to detail, and familiarity with Wikipedia's house style. It took me about two months to go through the Manual of Style and the exercises at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/How to before I started copy editing. I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't copy edit, but I want you to be aware that there's a bit of a learning curve, and it may be more of a commitment than you're willing to put in as a volunteer.

The Manual of Style is huge, but for the moment try to absorb the basics expressed in the simplified Manual of Style.

I liked how you arranged material in a logical, chronological order, and handled some tone issues. Further improvements could be made in that vein. There are a lot of punctuation problems, however. I feel that the first article also needs the paragraph breaks to separate subjects and make it a little easier to read.

I'm going to leave more detailed notes in the following sections (below). If you decide this is too much for you right now, you might be interested in these projects:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject India – this group specializes in the subject area and is familiar with all the issues in writing articles for it.
• Wikipedia:Translation – if you're more interested in translations, this group translates other languages into comprehensible English which can then be tagged for copyediting.

Now, on to specific notes. If you have any questions, please ask in the respective sections. Thanks.

Copy edit of Prahlad Pandey

I've gone ahead and done additional copy edit to this article. You can use the "View history" tab at the top of the article's page, and follow the links there to see the changes I made. I find it useful to view two versions of the article side-by-side and compare differences.

Notes:

• Punctuation
  • Spacing at punctuation – This is very apparent and should be easy to fix. You don't want any spaces before commas or full stops/periods, and there should be a space after commas and periods (aside from when used in acronyms and initialisms). Having spaces in the wrong place makes the article look unfinished, can be confusing or difficult to read, and can cause issues when line wraps put the punctuation at the beginning of a line.
  • Commas separating clauses – This requires a little more consideration. You really need to look at every sentence, break them down, be sure of the meaning, and place them as appropriate. This helps with clarity and readability.
    • There are different levels of separation for clauses. Commas are the most common, used with subordinate clauses; semi-colons can be used if the clauses are independent – that is, if the clause could stand as its own sentence, but is tied together as a common thought. A third form of separation is to use a dash (entered as a spaced en-dash or an unspaced em-dash) for a stronger separation of thought.
• Overcapitalization – Be careful to only capitalize proper names.
  • Subjects like history, economics and political science should all be lower-case as generic; English is upper-case because it's specific and itself named for a proper name.
  • Job titles should be lower-case unless attached to a person's name (e.g. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan) MOS:JOBTITLE
  • gram panchayat should be lowercase (generic) and italic MOS:FOREIGNITALIC
• Tenses
  • Since Wikipedia summarizes what has appeared in reliable sources, it is generally reporting past events. It tends to be easier to use the past tense when writing articles. Anything written as "currently" or "now" will quickly become outdated.
• Plain English and clarity
  • Remembering that Wikipedia is for a general audience, try to use general terms rather than local terms. "Unmetalled road" may be confusing to North Americans.
  • put "village" back in to specify what "Rajapur" is (important since it isn't linked)
  • some acronyms needed to be expanded. Searching Wikipedia for them will often help and also indicate another article to link.
  • Added more paragraph breaks.
  • Prahlad is the founder member → Pandey is a founding member (agreement with indefinite article)
• Minor tone
  • The sentence beginning "Despite having to [...]" has a minor tone issue, implying that certain hardships made an accomplishment more noteworthy. That's a bit like stating an opinion in Wikipedia's voice. What we should rather do is to simply state the facts and let the reader make the judgement about whether this was a significant achievement – or cite a reliable secondary source which says it was a notable achievement.
  • The subject should be referred to by surname, which I assume is Pandey. MOS:SURNAME
• Layout
  • Moved the 2011 Indore anti-corruption protests up with the 2011 IAC anti-corruption movement. I feel it fits better as a single subject.
  • Moved early activism down to the activism section.

Copy edit of Ram Singh Kuka

For this article, I'll give you my notes on what I feel could be improved, and I'll leave it to you to make any changes. Please keep in mind that a copy edit will not be considered complete unless it is free of spelling, punctuation and grammar errors, and compliant with the Manual of Style.

Notes:

• When you moved the article, you should have changed the lead to reflect the new name (assuming it is appropriate). So it should start with Ram Singh Kuka. Possibly add the Kuka elsewhere in the article as well, or put in an also/commonly known as Ram Singh.
• You added bold to "Satguru". I think you should change that back. If that is a title or honorific, it should not be in bold. MOS:LEAD
• Following the subject's name, there is a parenthetic date range. Date ranges are composed of a beginning date and an ending date which are separated. Separation of this sort is indicated on Wikipedia by an en-dash
  • There's a fair amount to read about this at MOS:DASH, but essentially hyphens are used to show association (conjunction) and dashes are used to show separation (disjunction). So that hyphen should be replaced with an en-dash. If you don't know how to type one on your keyboard, use &–
• There should be some indication of what a "satguru" is. I know it's linked, but you shouldn't expect a reader to chase links to understand what you're saying. I tend to think it should go in italics, with a brief translation or explanation following in parenthesis.
• Satguru Ram Singh was born was the subject born as a "satguru"? If not, then the title should be removed from the sentence and not used until the subject took/received the title "satguru".
• 1816,to there should be a space after the comma. I won't mention others like this.
• He later became the founder of Namdhari Sikhism. I think you can lose that sentence. Section layout is meant to organize information for the reader, handling one topic at a time. It shouldn't mention things which aren't part of the subject's "Early life".
  • On the other hand, this isn't mentioned in the lead. It wouldn't be bad to add a sentence there to summarize section two.
• behavior I'm not 100% on Indian English, but I believe this should be "behaviour".
• with the fall in values of the society. The word "the" is the definite article which means that "the society" is referring to a specific society, but it isn't clear which. I feel this should either be specified, or "the" should be removed for a more general sense. So, perhaps "with the fall in values of military society", for example, or "with the fall in values of society".
• Prince Naunihal Singh platoon if this is the name of the platoon, then platoon should also be capitalized. If this is the platoon of Prince Naunihal Singh, then it should use the possessive, i.e. "Prince Naunihal Singh's platoon".
• Immediately following, "sent" starts another clause. That's a place where you could put a comma. However, you should check the phrasing to make sure it's clear whether the unit or the entire platoon was sent. (From the context, I think it was the unit.)
• “I had been waiting for you.” This is fairly minor but it's a pet peeve of mine. Those curly quotes are known to cause WP:ACCESSIBILITY problems and should be replaced with straight double quotes. (see MOS:CURLY if interested)
• taught the Guru mantra watch the capitalization there.
• five paise and took five rounds around him in reverence The prose here could use improvement for clarity. "paise coins" might be clearer for a general audience, if that's accurate. "rounds around" is awkward.
• Section headers should be in sentence case, not title case. The only capitals should be the first letter, the first letters of proper names, and possibly acronyms. Two section headers could use correction.
• The day, April 12, 1857 You don't have to say "the day". The reader knows that's a day. It's unnecessarily wordy.
• an auspicious day I feel that's a bit of a peacock term, there's a tone issue, and it's saying the day is important without saying why. I might replace it by just saying it's the Sikh new year or something like that. Mention of Namdhari Sikhism can wait a bit until Ram Singh founds it, and the reader will then know its importance.
  • So much can be cut out of the first sentence, I might start it with "On" and combine it with the second sentence as a subordinate clause.
• Namdhari Khalsa could possibly use a parenthetic translation note. It's sort of explained in the second paragraph of the section, but it could be clearer.
• The Government of India officially decided to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Satguru Ram Singh starting from 2016 That's a point that could maybe go in the lead (with citation).
• gurdwaras, Holy Granth other terms that could use explanation. Also check for capitalization and possibly italics for foreign words not used in common non-specialized English (MOS:FOREIGNITALIC).
• The term Anand Karaz is linked twice in one paragraph, which is excessive. Only the first mention should be linked. WP:OVERLINKING
• The last sentence is missing a full stop/period.

I'd appreciate it if you could correct these issues. If you have any questions or comments, please post them here. Thanks – Reidgreg (talk) 19:46, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your advice. I admit my lapses. There are two issues worthy of discussion regarding the articles

1. The title of Satguru was probably never officially conferred to him .It is more like a nickname conferred to him by the community. Ex:Bapu.Thus I am confused about the syntax.
2. rounds aroundseems to be okay English to me, may be it is an oddity of IE.
3. The platoon seems to be named after the prince. I have added a citation which mentions the exact same thing in the same way.

Please review any other article I may CE.ThanksPratim from Lakhuria (talk) 09:15, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

You're welcome! The main thing, I think, is not to rush. There are a lot of different things to catch and you're not going to spot them all right away. So take your time, take a break and come back to it. If there's something you're unclear about, chances are that it's covered in the Manual of Style somewhere. The trick is finding it!

In response to your points:

1. For encyclopedic tone, usually we refer to the subject by surname after giving the full name on first occurrence in the lead and body of the article. (There are some examples at MOS:SURNAME and MOS:JOBTITLE.) The exceptions are when it provides context or if there are clarity issues. Like where the article talks of Ram Singh and Balak Singh, if they were just called Singh it wouldn't be comprehensible.
   • The only one that really stands out to me now is As a young man, Satguru Ram Singh. To me, that implies he was a satguru as a young man, which doesn't seem to be the case.
   • I'd note one of the capitalization exceptions with In accordance with the instruction of the Satguru. Since this is clearly referring to a specific satguru, the subject, Ram Singh, it gets a capital. You can tell because it's the Satguru.
2. I guess there are two issues with "rounds around". Actually, it's more with the larger phrase "took five rounds around".
   1. Clarity: "rounds" has many definitions, and it isn't clear which one is used. Balak gave Ram Singh three things, then "took five rounds", so "took" might sound like he's taking something back in exchange for the three things given. Ram Singh was in the army so "rounds" might be taken to mean "rounds of ammunition".
   2. It isn't very good prose to use similar-sounding words together. The blitz instructions once said "place the article you're working on on the working line". The "on on" is a bit weird, it can take the reader a moment to parse the meaning. It's particularly an issue with prepositions. Anything like that which might give the reader pause should be smoothed-out.
3. Citations are good, but they're there to verify the prose. The prose still has to be understandable. We shouldn't expect readers to follow links or citations to understand the article.

For your additional edits to the article:

• I like how you expanded the lead to better summarize the article. A lot of copy editors forget about that, but it's a good thing to do after you've gone through the article. I'd change one thing in the order, though. Where it says starting from 2016. He later became the founder of Namdhari Sikhism. the reader might think that means he became the founder after 2016.
• I like the other refinements you made. I feel it reads better, is a more concise summary, and has more encyclopedic tone.
• The article needs a final polish for a dash and spaces at punctuation, references and parenthesis. Please check over these carefully; it's required for a complete copy edit.

I know I've given you a lot to think about, but please try to keep this in mind with any additional articles you copy edit. When you've made all the improvements you can think of with your next copy edit, come back to these lists (all above) and think about whether any of these issues affect that article as well. Take your time. Copy edit is all about the quality of the work. – Reidgreg (talk) 13:23, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Revert to Eitel Brothers regarding anchors

I'm reverting one or two of your edits to Eitel Brothers. The anchors are being used to link up from the citations/references. It's not the usual way of doing things, but Wikipedia has several valid citation styles and we shouldn't change them arbitrarily. Generally, it's not a good idea to remove anchors. They may link from other pages, and it can be very difficult to trace them back to make sure there are no problems. – Reidgreg (talk) 13:27, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I also meant to mention that it's discouraged to work on more than one copy edit at a time. So finish work on Eitel Brothers, and any addtional work on your previous copy edits, before moving on to Kavasji Naegamvala. Splitting your attention between multiple copy edits just makes it easier to miss things. As with most things, it's best to first concentrate on quality. Your speed will then gradually improve with practise. – Reidgreg (talk) 13:32, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

@Reidgreg Thanks for your advice.I'll try to follow it.As far as Eitel Brothers will it be okay to create separate articles about the four brothers themselves ?I have looked at the article an copy-edited part of it .It seems to me that the article would be better of having only The early life and their achievements listed .The articles about the brothers may be listed in a See-also section .as of now the article seems overfull of info and could do with less (When I first took a look at it I was totally confused about the articles subject)Pratim from Lakhuria (talk) 11:13, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

I took a quick look at the article. It's a translation of an article from the German Wikipedia. (I linked to the German article on the talk page. BTW: If you noticed a lot of overcapitalization, in the German language all nouns are capitalized.) I suspect that the four were put together in one article because it was easier to establish their notability as a group. If you separate them, you'd have to establish notability for each – otherwise, one or more of the separate articles could be in danger of deletion.

You can split the article, but I wouldn't recommend it. I feel it might be too much work for you, and you'd have to learn about creating articles and notability as well as preserving attribution to all the people who worked on the present article. The German Wikipedia doesn't have separate articles for the brothers (except the architect, Albert) so it might be good to keep it in one article so that major updates on the German Wikipedia can be more-easily added here.

You may be right about having to cut out puffery, fluff and trivia. Wikipedia articles are meant to summarize what has appeared in reliable sources, not to cover every little aspect of a subject. I'll try to take a closer look at the content and give you some specific advice later today. – Reidgreg (talk) 14:04, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Took a better look. I feel I should note that Eitel Brothers is about four times the size of the articles you've previously worked on, so it will take at least four times as long to finish it. (The longer an article is, the more difficult is is to maintain consistency in the writing.) If it confuses you, it might not be the best choice for one of your first copyedits. If you feel you may not be able to finish it before the end of the blitz, feel free to take it off your list and pick a smaller article instead.

In addition to the rough translations, I think you're right about the article needing to be reorganized (what I call "layout" work). My preference would be to combine the histories of the four brothers into a single chronologically-arranged biographical section summarizing the overlapping business career of the four brothers (including Bismark Hotel, Marigold Gardens and Eitel Inc.); then personal lives afterwards. But it's a lot of work. I'd hesitate before taking it on. It's challenging; you'll earn the wordcount if you can finish it, that's for sure. (P.S.: forget what I said earlier about updates from the German wikipedia; the brothers have been dead for a while so the content should be stable.) – Reidgreg (talk) 14:45, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

It is certainly a lot of work .I'll have some extended time tomorrow and day after during which I'll attempt the reorganization.BTW Kavasji Naegamvala needs an experts attention (astronomy) I have reorganized the sections but am hesitant to wade into the muck of prose mixed with astronomical terms in fear of changing the meaning.I'll take that of my list for this blitz and report it to the astronomy section of Wikipedia after the blitz if another copy-editor has not copy-edited it in the meantime. Pratim from Lakhuria (talk) 11:16, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Good call. Sometimes if a translation is incomprehensible, I'll refer it to the translation group. BTW, Ram Singh Kuka could use a little more attention to spaces at references and punctuation, and a dash in the date range. – Reidgreg (talk) 11:50, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Blitz copy editing feedback

Thanks for copy-editing articles for the GOCE's August blitz! Please take a look at the additional cleanup that I have performed on two of your articles in order to see how you might do an even better job in the future. Nice work. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:07, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

GOCE August 2017 Blitz Bling

		The Modest Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Pratim from Lakhuria for copy edits totaling over 2,000 words (including rollover words) during the GOCE August 2017 Copy Editing Blitz. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Keira1996 07:46, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Shubodh graffiti

Hello, Pratim from Lakhuria. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Shubodh graffiti".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply and remove the {{db-afc}}, {{db-draft}}, or {{db-g13}} code.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. Legacypac (talk) 10:06, 28 February 2018 (UTC)