Talk:List of Swallows and Amazons characters

only the GA?

Of all these characters, only the GA gets a separate article? Perhaps that's left over from some past arrangement, but that strikes me as highly unnecessary - not even the main characters need their own pages. - DavidWBrooks 22:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

There were others which have been recently merged, I have also merged Maria Turner too. Dabbler 12:10, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I spoke too soon! Well done. - DavidWBrooks 12:54, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

The character "Missee Lee" is not mentioned in the List. An oversight ? Jgiddy 04:47, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Lots of characters are not (yet) listed, if you think someone is important enough, be bold and list them. Dabbler 14:56, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

D's or Ds?

I should like to propose that the apostrophe used when referring to Dick and Dorothea as the Ds in the article be removed. Ransome himself did not use an apostrophe - e.g. in Winter Holiday in which the characters are introduced: "The Ds" ("that's us", said Dorothea) "returned to the ship after a successful expedition to the south-east". An apostrophe is also absent from secondary sources such as in Christina Hardiment's Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint's Trunk. Cheers, Nancy ^talk 22:14, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

That's a very good point. (By the way, I'm the guy who re-introduced the apostrophe, so I'm pro-apostrophe.) The only argument in favor of the weird apostrophe is increased readability when you are using a single letter as a word - for example, the sentence "the report card had all A's" because otherwise it reads like "... had all As" like the word "as" which makes no sense.

I'm an American, and this may be a case where American and British style differ.

To sum up, although I returned it, I think you have made a good argument to eliminate it. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 02:07, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Could well be another case of US/GB variation, it is a source of constant amazement that I come across a new difference in our common language almost every day. I've done some more digging and I can't find confirmation of the transatlantic variation but according to a certain unreliable source it is "acceptable to use apostrophes to show plurals of single lower-case letters" but "upper case letters need no apostrophe" which may well be where the confusion has arisen. I've also looked through some of the other Swallows and Amazons articles and there is a fair smattering of both Ds and D's so perhaps if a consensus can be reached here we should have consistency everywhere else as well.Nancy ^talk 08:12, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I came across this inconsistency in the articles and I'm not sure which way to go. My Jonathan Cape editions of the books have "D.'s" in the text (and lettered in the endpaper map for Winter Holiday, along with "S.'s" and "A.'s").Modal Jig (talk) 17:34, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe the information on "whether to use apostrophe with the initialism of Dot and Dick" can be found in Ransome's papers alongside information on "name of youngest Walker child"!

Anyway, somebody needs to BE BOLD and decide, and make changes needed for consistency; it really doesn't matter one way or the other. I just did a search of the Times online and it uses an apostrophe (e.g., "Prisoner A writes down the colour of Prisoner B's hat. Prisoner B writes down the colour that Prisoner A's hat is not."), so I'd say let's use it. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 20:26, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

That is a different use of the apostrophe, in the Times quote it is being used to indicate possessive case, rather than in "The D's went for a walk" where it indicates the plural and could be replaced by "The Ds". Dabbler (talk) 22:12, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Good point - I was reading too speedily. Then BE BOLD and un-apostrophe-ify everything! - DavidWBrooks (talk) 22:36, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Done as far as I can tell, please continue if any others are found. Dabbler (talk) 22:52, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Request for comment on articles for individual television episodes and characters

A request for comments has been started that could affect the inclusion or exclusion of episode and character, as well as other fiction articles. Please visit the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(fiction)#Final_adoption_as_a_guideline. Ikip (talk) 11:20, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Nancy Blackett article?

Seven years ago I asked why only the GA had a separate article, of all the characters. Now I'm asking why only Nancy Blackett has a separate article. That seems, IMHO, unnecessary. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 16:17, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

The Nancy article contains a great deal more information about that character than is provided for the other characters in this article. Either this article would benefit from expanding the character information or there might be a case for separate expanded articles on some of the others - perhaps an article covering the Walkers and their origins, perhaps adding a Peggy section to Nancy's article. RGCorris (talk) 17:02, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

I love S&A as much as anybody, but it seems to me that crafting separate articles discussing the half-dozen characters (or more) as important as Captain Nancy, including links to academic wild guesswork about sex, would take us too far down the path to fancruft and/or thesis-seeking literary analysis. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 17:19, 14 January 2019 (UTC)