- A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for November 2008.
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I've created this page, and have done a lot of work to it over the past week. I'm wondering where to go with it now, and how to expand it better. I feel that I've given the article a good basis, but would like suggestions on which direction to take it so that I may expand it in a useful way, give welcome and helpful information, and avoid any waffle.
Any advice would be very much appreciated.
Thanks, Adasta 
15:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
Brianboulton comments: Here are some comments on the first couple of sections.
- Lead
- en dashes, not hyphens, are required
**spelling error - "opression" --> "oppression"
- Done. --80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
**"with one another" at the end of the lead is redundant; this is implicit in "sharing a common history".
Background
- Done. --80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
**The map is rather old (from 1911 Britannia) and not at all clear. I am not sure of its value, and its positioning here seems pointless anyway. I'd recommend losing it.
- Done. --80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
Both parts of the first sentence are a bit problematic. The first part is oddly phrased; I assume it means it was Ngugi's first novel after completing his further education. If so, this should be clarified. It would be interesting to include where these studies took place, and what he was studying. The second part of the sentence is also odd. "Instead" is wrong here; just say it was written over a five year period.
- Done. --80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
- Avoid "whilst" (a WP-disapproved word). Use "while" instead.
- Whilst is an acceptable word in BE. I know there's some debate about "while", but I'm not going to change it. The OED writes:
'2. conj. = WHILE conj. 1' and that's good enough for me!--80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
**Second sentence - more grammatical problems. The subject of the first clause is the novel ("Initially begun..." etc), but in the rest of the sentence the subject is the author. This needs to be rewritten along the lines: "He began it while teaching at North Western University, and continued to work on it after his return..." etc
- I think this has been done (although not by me!). --80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
**Try to avoid too many repetitions of the word "novel", if you can.
- Changed a few words. --80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
**"...to be written first in English." I think "first" is redundant - the book was "written in English"
- It's actually a significant point, but I don't think I clarified it enough. Hopefully this revision makes its relevance more explicit.--80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
**Presumably, Government interference began after the publication of his first work in Gikuyu, not after he merely decided to write in the language?
- Cleared that up, I think.--80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
**Ngugi "wrote and began work"? Needs rephrasing.
- Done.--80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
I'll be back with more comments later, but the above points give you something to work on. Brianboulton (talk) 00:42, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
Plot Summary: I had a lot of problems with this section. It does not flow smoothly and is rather disjointed, and I had no sense at the end of what the book was really about. Here are examples of some of the difficulties I found:-
- Karega is supposedly one of the main characters, but we are not told who he is, as we are with the other main characters.
*Wanja, we are told, is the "daughter of the town's oldest and most revered lady", which seems unlikely given that she is apparently herself a young woman. In the list of characters Wanja is said to be this old lady's granddaughter, not daughter. Need to clarify.
- An oversight which has been corrected. --80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
*Nyakinua is not identified in your summary as the old lady, Wanja's grandmother, so I had to try and guess who she was.
- Corrected. --80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
- In paragraph 3 you don't explain Wanja's sudden return to the story. What was she doing in Nairobi?
*You have the group arriving in Nairobi twice in this paragraph - line 2 and line 5
- Clarified. --80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
- What happened to the boy Joseph?
*The plot summary should stick to the main points of the narrative rather than including what seem to be side issues. For example, the sentence about Karaega corresponding with a lawyer "about his education" seems divorced from the main plot and appears in the middle of a passage about the rains coming. Again, the air-crash that kills a donkey seems to have little to do with the main plot.
- Removed extraneous details.--80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
*What is "Thang'eta"? Presumably some sort of drug, but this needs explaining.
- Clarified. --80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
*Abdulla seems to fade out of the story apart from being the owner of the killed donkey, though he is mentioned without explanation as Wanja's main love.
- Revised. --80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
*Who were "the other men Wanja invited", that died in the fire?
- Fixed. --80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
*Some sentences are puzzling, e.g. "This is the first time Munira hears the story" - what story?
- Clarified
*"Munira is sentenced with arson"; arson is the crime, the sentence is the punishment. You can't be sentenced to arson. You need to clarify.
- Clarified. --80.5.207.41 (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
- Overall, more care needed with punctuation.
- More attention needed to grammar and sentence construction: "...who Munira falls in love with" should be "with whom Munira falls in love", "Wanja grows disillusioned" should be "Wanja becomes disillusioned", with a comma after "disillusioned".
I will leave it to you to act on or respond to these points, and the earlier ones. I'll continue with the review when I have your responses. Please leave a message on my talkpage Brianboulton (talk) 17:28, 5 December 2008 (UTC)