AnmaFinotera (talk | contribs) move archive links to box - talk header clearly unnecessary |
KillerChihuahua (talk | contribs) |
||
Line 35: | Line 35: | ||
This article is currently listed as a [[WP:FA|featured article]], however it now fails the [[Wikipedia:Featured article criteria|criteria]] for being one as there are numerous unsourced statements within the article. This is just not acceptable for a featured article. It has been tagged for needing more references to address this. If the article's sourcing issues are not addressed soon, it will be taken to [[WP:FAR|featured article review]] to be delisted as a featured article. It also is lacking an infobox, the lead does not appear to be properly summarize the article. -- [[User:Collectonian|<span style='font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; color:#5342FF'>Collectonian</span>]] ([[User talk:Collectonian|talk]] '''·''' [[Special:Contributions/Collectonian|contribs]]) 03:13, 15 September 2009 (UTC) |
This article is currently listed as a [[WP:FA|featured article]], however it now fails the [[Wikipedia:Featured article criteria|criteria]] for being one as there are numerous unsourced statements within the article. This is just not acceptable for a featured article. It has been tagged for needing more references to address this. If the article's sourcing issues are not addressed soon, it will be taken to [[WP:FAR|featured article review]] to be delisted as a featured article. It also is lacking an infobox, the lead does not appear to be properly summarize the article. -- [[User:Collectonian|<span style='font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; color:#5342FF'>Collectonian</span>]] ([[User talk:Collectonian|talk]] '''·''' [[Special:Contributions/Collectonian|contribs]]) 03:13, 15 September 2009 (UTC) |
||
:Please be specific; what content do you feel is inadequately sourced? [[User:KillerChihuahua|KillerChihuahua]]<small><sup>[[User talk:KillerChihuahua|?!?]]</sup>[[User:Heimstern/Ignoring incivility|Advice]]</small> 20:14, 16 September 2009 (UTC) |
Revision as of 20:14, 16 September 2009
![]() | Oroonoko is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | |||||||||
![]() | This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on June 27, 2006. | |||||||||
|
![]() | Books FA‑class | ||||||
|
![]() | Novels FA‑class High‑importance ![]() | ||||||||||||
|
|
|
Great article - however...
This is certainly a magisterial article and as a mere gnome with notions of upperosity I am reluctant to see it tinkered with. However, I venture to question one revert and suggest one change:
"Instead of identifying Oroonoko with physical features that are native to Africa, the speaker associates Oroonoko as a great man who looks and acts like an European-English aristocrat."
Somebody corrected "an European-English aristocrat" to "a European-English aristocrat" and the edit was reverted. I suggest that the revert is incorrect, since the rule that the indefinite article "an" is the only one suitable for preceding a noun beginning with a vowel can be safely ignored if the first sound in the noun is not a vowel sound - e.g., since the word "Europe" begins with a "y" sound, we don't write "an European country" but "a European country". My other point is that we have to associate something "with" something else - we don't associate something "as" something else. I have not read the novel, and so I don't want to suggest an alternative wording for the sentence, because right now I am not sure what it means. Lexo (talk) 21:56, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
To follow up: I looked up the "a/an" controversy in both Hart's Rules and Fowler and saw that "a" is prescribed for words beginning with vowels or vowel combinations that imply silent consonants such as "y", so I made the edit. After all, we would not describe Geogre as "an uniquely gifted contributor and editor" but as "a uniquely gifted contributor and editor". Lexo (talk) 22:03, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
- You have found a soft spot! Fowler is delightful. I do the "an" sometimes in a fussy way. For example, it's entirely hypercorrective, fuddy duddy, and fussy, but I'll do "an historian," nearly as a language joke. H, after all, is not a consonant. It is an aspiration mark (hence the Greeks using a mere aspiration mark to indicate it). The same is true of the /y/ sound created with "European." It's a joke, nearly, and the reversion was probably because of an edit summary that implied that I didn't know what I was doing.
- To be serious about it, in both instances (y-sounds and h-aspirant), the "an" is optional. I believe in our allowing options, and I dislike the decreasing freedom of our editors created by -bot generated edits and the sort. Therefore, I usually do the antique usage as a bit of a point. In fact, I will always say "a European," and I will never say "an historical." Geogre (talk) 10:42, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
- I notice that New Hart's Rules is silent on the subject (I keep the more up-to-date edition in work, where I need it; last night at home I was looking up an older edition) but the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors yields this (p.16): "an: use a not an before words such as hotel and historical where the initial h is sounded." On the other hand, Fowler 3rd edition, which I have before me (at home I was using Fowler 2) does indeed allow the option of "an historical" (p.2), at least in written English. In case you were wondering, I also have Fowler 1 and indeed the bros. Fowler's The King's English, now definitely out of date but still interesting. I myself would write "a historical" but would pronounce it more like "a 'storical". Lexo (talk) 11:13, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
- If we want to be linguistic, and, really, there is no need to have that desire, we'd argue that the aspiration of /h/ is getting hard in contemporary English. Most folks have no ambiguity about "an hour," but they also do not aspirate that /h/. Now me, I love King's English. It was one of the Fowlers, I think, that had the rule that "an exclamation point is to be used only in direct discourse, and then when one of the parties is on fire." If I were to be serious, and, really, there is no need for that, either, my own view is that written English is an artificial language, the it is not dependent upon our speech in most respects, and therefore there is no need to change its conventions because our speech has changed with regard to h's and y's. This thought leads me to appear to be archaic because of a view that is actually somewhat avant garde.
- (I can rant for a while on this subject, and I do when I have to teach elementary writers. I tell them that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the dialects they speak, nor with the slang they employ, but written English is an artificial language, that none of us, from the Bahamas to Indonesia, write the way we speak, that the artificiality of written English allows us to understand each other, whether from South Africa or the Orkney Islands, in print, when we would never understand each other in person. For that reason, I rather like consistent rules in written English and pay less attention to how we speak.) Geogre (talk) 11:27, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
- Funnily enough I was reading King's English last night and reflecting that an inexperienced writer who were to use it as a style guide now would get some very strange and arguably incorrect ideas about acceptable usage in 2008 - for example, the Fowlers' ideas of what constitutes an unacceptable "Americanism" is well out of date. I wouldn't use "muthafucka" in a formal letter, but unlike them I have no problem with "standpoint". I agree with you about consistent rules in written English, though. Everybody needs and deserves the capacity to write a standard version of English. There's a great, bitter joke about it in An Béal Bocht, referring to the Gaeilgeoirí who travelled as linguistic tourists in the west of Ireland: "The gentlemen had fluent English from birth but they never practised this noble tongue in the presence of the Gaels lest, it seemed, the Gaels might pick up an odd word of it as a protection against the difficulties of life." The social point is even stronger in the original - "gentlemen" translates daoine uaisle, lit. "noble folk", and the adjective is repeated in teanga uasal, "noble tongue". Lexo (talk) 15:26, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
- I notice that New Hart's Rules is silent on the subject (I keep the more up-to-date edition in work, where I need it; last night at home I was looking up an older edition) but the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors yields this (p.16): "an: use a not an before words such as hotel and historical where the initial h is sounded." On the other hand, Fowler 3rd edition, which I have before me (at home I was using Fowler 2) does indeed allow the option of "an historical" (p.2), at least in written English. In case you were wondering, I also have Fowler 1 and indeed the bros. Fowler's The King's English, now definitely out of date but still interesting. I myself would write "a historical" but would pronounce it more like "a 'storical". Lexo (talk) 11:13, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
FAR Looming - Citations needed
This article is currently listed as a featured article, however it now fails the criteria for being one as there are numerous unsourced statements within the article. This is just not acceptable for a featured article. It has been tagged for needing more references to address this. If the article's sourcing issues are not addressed soon, it will be taken to featured article review to be delisted as a featured article. It also is lacking an infobox, the lead does not appear to be properly summarize the article. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 03:13, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
- Please be specific; what content do you feel is inadequately sourced? KillerChihuahua?!?Advice 20:14, 16 September 2009 (UTC)