Talk:Brooks Hays

Odd syntax
As of the date of this post, this article contains the following two consecutive sentences: "Hays finished third, ahead of the man who had defeated him as a write-in candidate in 1958, Dale Alford, but behind Frank Holt and Justice Jim Johnson. The eventual party nominee, James D. Johnson, a former Arkansas Supreme Court justice from Conway, and an avowed segregationist, was defeated in the November general election by the Republican Winthrop Rockefeller of Morrilton." Two names in that text, "Justice Jim Johnson" and "James D. Johnson", refer to the same person using different names. This is confusing. Furthermore, "James D. Johnson" is hot-text, while "Justice Jim Johnson" is NOT hot-text although it falls earlier. This gives a STRONG impression (to someone accustomed to Wikipedia's practice (which should be changed as it causes inconvenience to anyone NOT reading an article start-to-finish) of click-linking only the FIRST reference to something that is the subject of another Wikipedia article), that the two names are NOT the same person, since if they WERE the same person we'd expect "Justice Jim Johnson" and not "James D. Johnson" to be hot-text. The typical and customary way to word the two sentences would be 'Hays finished third, ahead of the man who had defeated him as a write-in candidate in 1958, Dale Alford, but behind Frank Holt and James D. ("Justice Jim") Johnson. The eventual party nominee, Johnson (a former Arkansas Supreme Court justice from Conway and an avowed segregationist) was defeated in the November general election by the Republican Winthrop Rockefeller of Morrilton." I've changed some commas to parentheses to ensure that the reader doesn't start processing the text as a list of further people but rather interprets the text as additional descriptions pertaining to the person just mentioned. I would very much appreciate it if the next time Wikipedia asks for my money they include a promise that the money will provide salaries for persons with no knowledge of the experts' subjects to proofread articles with an eye to the grammar and coherence. Too many articles are the work of experts on the subject who are not experts in writing articles.2603:7000:9906:A91C:1C64:8308:33BC:E2D6 (talk) 21:12, 6 April 2021 (UTC)Christopher L. Simpson