Talk:Alcea digitata

Latest comment: 9 months ago by Meteorquake in topic Copyedting issues

Copyedting issues

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Please do not open threads at WT:MOS about copyediting at particular articles like this one. THis is tagged for cleanup because the first non-lead sentence was a huge run-on; "in Turkey 20–2400 m" didn't make sense; "well divided" and "leaf end" should be hyphenated; "hairs star-like" was missing a verb, and that clause needed to be semicolon-separated or made into its own sentence; an inline list like "roadsides, fields, rocky slopes, steppe, maquis" needs "and" before the last item; same with "Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Turkey" (which is not a sentence); various technical terms needed to be linked (e.g. two in "The epicalyx is large (>=50% calyx)"); shouldn't use mathematical symbols in running text for non-math expressions, but just use words (but does this mean "mostly consisting of calyx" or "larger than the calyx"?); "pilose hairy (the sides sparsely)" doesn't make sense (seems to be at least missing a verb, and maybe misusing an adjective as a noun, but I'm not certain); there is no such place as "Lebanon-Syria". Probably others.

I have fixed some of these problems (and several others), but some of them remain because I'm not sure what the intent of the material is.  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  20:52, 31 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. I've noted the linguistic changes you made for future reference, which is much more helpful than just seeing a tag.
I wouldn't necessarily agree with every single change - 3 m (i.e. to 3.5 m) for a hollyhock is 'very tall' rather than simply 'tall', you're looking up into the sky to see the top of it; and I wouldn't start a sentence with 'Whilst' to contrast with a previous sentence. However I do take the general gist, preferring separate sentences to longer ones is good. Putting altitude in the distribution is fine although I would see altitude as more a habitat matter (high altitude means snow, winds, rain, cold etc). Both options probably make equal sense.
Can you elaborate on the removal of the two citations - Flora of Turkey, and Flora of Syria - is it just because they need page numbers added? I tend to avoid page numbers for electronic documents since the Find button can be used and documents may change subtly (e.g. researchgate adds an extra front page), but I could more often put them for other works. Flora of Syria is a bit of an inbetween, as it's available electronically on archive.org and Find is easy to use but the page would be helpful. Let me know if that was the issue there.
At the bottom it's still flagging the need for inline citations. As I've mentioned I don't think that's practical for a lot of plant descriptions and unless it's a description built from very fragmented sources it isn't done in botany for a description because it doesn't work, you write the description and provide the sources for it. Meteorquake (talk) 09:06, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply