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Sentence spacing

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it received some comments at WP:FAC [1] that need addressing. Key themes:

1. U.S. Centric. Probably needs to identify some of the books referenced that are published and/or written outside of the U.S.—as well as works that cover more than just English. Also needs to determine what style guides and works cover English-speakers outside of the U.S. (most probably use U.K. guides). Could also add verbiage about French style guides and "French speaking Africa" among others, for example.
2. Prose. There were some comments regarding the tightening of prose. E.g. "Prose needs a lot of attention to get rid of the verbosity."
3. Summary. I'm not interested in deleting/summarizing this on a massive scale. What might be appropriate is to split the style guide list out to a separate article. That would:
a. Allow more information to be given in that article (it's summarized a lot now)
b. Shorten the Sentence spacing article quite a bit—addressing at least one editor's concern.
My concern is that I'm not sure the list of style guides on this particular topic is notable IAW WP:N to allow a split. Thoughts? Also, if so, what should it be called? "Style guides: guidance on sentence spacing?"
4. Any prose that might imply NPOV. Have to be careful on this one. In some cases I chose to dilute strong positions in the literature because it might seem POV in the article. E.g. - most typographers state that double sentence spacing is never correct now. Since some other sources allow that it might be OK if you're using a typewriter or a monospaced font, I chose to say "...say that double sentence spacing is obsolete for most uses" (or something to that effect). "Obsolete" might seem POV, but it's weaker language than "absolutely incorrect" as one typographer stated. Regardless, the article will probably have to withstand NPOV challenges, so this would be a key area to look at critically.

The prose defintely needs tightening. There are lots of possible ways to do that, I'm sure. I'm hesitant to draw down the number of citations on this subject, however. This is a topic of heated debate on the Internet. Many people just dismiss reliable information on this topic. Without sufficient depth on this topic, it will be attacked violently by some people out there (some of this can be seen by older threads on the talk page).

Finally, I'm not asking for others to rewrite according to the above (although certainly no issues with that). I'd like to hear if my thoughts adequately address the issues, if other editors can identify where prose can be tightened, thoughts on NPOV, splitting out the "style guide section," etc.

Thanks, Airborne84 (talk) 16:41, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: I will be honest, while I think this is an interesting topic, I had real trouble reading the article. I though the article was repetitious and the organization also did not help. Here are some suggestions for improvement.

  • First off the toolbox has some useful tools - the disambiguation link finder finds two links that need work, and there are several dead links according to the external link checker.
Fixed. Airborne84 (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I also wonder about the reliability of some of the sources used in the article - see WP:RS For example, what makes rotovision.com a reliable source? Or creativepro.com? Or typedesk.com? Do these websites have editorial oversight? I could be wrong, but they look like blogs or personal websites and not necessarily reliable.
This received some attention on the talk page. Rotovision is a book publisher and the images are from a published book by David Jury, a typographer. The other sources mentioned have been clarified in the endnotes for some. All are from reliable sources however, (e.g., Ilene Strizver's credentials (typedesk) make her an expert on the subject. I cerfully vetted all of the credentials of anyone that posted anything that looked like a "blog" or seemed close to it. Anything that was not a WP:RS, I didn't include (and there was a lot out there that was close). --Airborne84 (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think references are clearer and easier to follow when one source is used per footnote - as it is some refs are this way (and use the authors' last names and year of publication system with the full details in the References section) while others use a completely different system of multiple sources in a single footnote, some as complete refs, others as just names and date. I do not think the MOS likes mixing ref styles in a single footnote.
I checked the WP:MoS and the webpages on inline citations. There isn't any statement prohibiting this technique that I could find. Wikipedia:Citing sources#How to present citations seems to allow this. I chose to keep it this way because, again, this is a topic of heated debate on the Internet. One reference will be happily and vigorously attacked by many people if it is written that way. Some of the endnotes have been expanded to retain material that was taken out of the text itself. To reduce the readable prose, I moved some sentences to the endnotes. I think it's ok to leave them because people make minor corrections to the endnotes all the time - so I know people are looking at them! I wouldn't want to delete material people want to read. Airborne84 (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are also some refs that need to spell out abbreviations - what is ALWD for example? Or I think the author should be "United States Navy" in United States. "U.S. Navy Style Guide "Punctuation"". http://www.navy.mil/tools/view_styleguide_all.asp. Retrieved 17 January 2010. and similar works.
Done--Airborne84 (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I also doubt that some of the current External links meet WP:EL - About.com??
Done. Scrubbed external links. --Airborne84 (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • It seems to me that if you could find or simulate a typewritten manuscript and show the differences between single and double spaces in the same text, that would be a useful lead image.
Done. Also added another image. --Airborne84 (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Part of getting through FAC is finding all the little details and making things consistent - so why is English spacing not in quotes, but French spacing is in quotes once and not in quotes the other time it is used in the article?
Fixed. Airborne84 (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Or it is "p." for a single page and "pp." for two or more pages (not "pps.")
Fixed. --Airborne84 (talk) 04:00, 15 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Page ranges should all use an en-dash, not a hyphen (as a matter of typography ;-) )
Had to laugh at this one! I searched through and found only a single page range that was a hyphen and not an en-dash. That must have been the one that Ruhrfisch saw. Anyway, I fixed it! --Airborne84 (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would reorganize the article for better flow. I would start with History and explain why spacing developed and how single spacing came to the fore. If anything, I would expand the current history section somewhat. Any time a style guide or author is quoted, I would give the date to make clear when they were speaking about the topic (since attitudes ahve changed with time). I am not sure if I would include the computer age history and then go into modern criticism / debate - I probably would, but am not sure. It might also work to talk historically about the development of double spacing and then have the quotes in favor of it.
Moved history after the TOC. Expanded, clarified, and added an image. Added dates to all style guides and related works that get updated. --Airborne84 (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Done, but mostly by me. I removed a lot of material, but there may still be areas to reduce. I'm not sure it's necessary, since the readable prose is well below Wikipedia standards for splitting, but since I wrote it, I could well have missed areas to simplify, reduce, or synthesize. --Airborne84 (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would also focus relentlessly on the topic at hand and cut out the tangential and irrelevant. There are two paragraphs on Dowding's book, including a long quote, but I could not see how he talked about this topic in the quote. If he did, make it clearer by explaining what he meant. If he did not, find a better quote or cut out the two paragraphs.
Addressed. Moved one quote to another setion that was more relevant and improved transition to it to clarify relevance. --Airborne84 (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why not just say
    • The the official guide for French is the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française; while this does not address sentence spacing, it is single sentence spaced, consistent with historical French spacing.
  • instead of this
    • For example, the Académie française publishes the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française for the French language[46] which is spoken in 57 countries and territories throughout the world, including Europe, North America, and Francophone Africa.[47] Although this work does not provide guidance on sentence spacing, its text is single sentence spaced throughout—which is consistent with historical French spacing.
Done. --Airborne84 (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I really think that less is more here - I had real trouble finishing this article and think if it were pared down and more tightly focused that would help a lot. As I said at the beginning, the topic is interesting, but it gets kind of lost in the verbiage and things that seem less than germane to the topic at hand.

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 01:57, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • A bit more - since the development of double spacing is attributed to typewriters, it seems funny that it never developed in some other countries that also used typewriters. I agree that as written now the article is fairly US-centric. While there are mentions of French and German, and pasing mentions of Canadian and Australian and British styles, it still seems that most examples are Aemrican.
This is a problem. I've researched this. Other countries (Italy, Germany, etc.) never used double sentence spacing—even on typewriters. So, they never published anything on this topic since it's a non-issue in those countries. Tough to put that in there though, since it's WP:OR on my part. I did the best I could in the language guide section by showing that their langauge guides are single sentence spaced. --Airborne84 (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Refs come after punctuation, but there are several places that need to be fixed like It would appear that by 21th century most editors really don't care, as long as the font is readable[84].
Fixed. --Airborne84 (talk) 04:01, 15 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch ><>°° 03:40, 27 April 2010 (UTC) `[reply]

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