Wikipedia:Peer review/1906 Florida Keys hurricane/archive1

1906 Florida Keys hurricane
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because I want to improve it even further, not necessarily to FA status.

Thanks,  HurricaneFan 25  11:50, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: Thanks for your work on this interesting hurricane article. The storm took what looks to me like a most unusual path. Here are quite a few suggestions about prose issues and a couple of suggestions for expansion.

Infobox
 * "135 workers on the Florida East Coast Railway were killed during the storm" - Since this is a complete sentence, it needs a terminal period. In addition, it should not start with digits, per the Manual of Style. You could recast to avoid the problem, perhaps like this: "The storm killed 135 workers on the Florida East Coast Railway."

Lead
 * "By October 8, it had intensified into tropical storm... " - Should this be "a tropical storm"? Missing "a"?


 * "At least 240 people were killed as a result of the hurricane,[note 1] and caused at least $4,135,000 in damages." - There's a grammar problem in this sentence, which seems to say that the 240 people caused the damage.


 * The lead repeats the word "hurricane" seven times. A bit more variety would be good.


 * Note 2: "Damages caused by the hurricane totaled to at least $4,135,000... " - Tighten by deleting "to"?


 * Note 2: "Peerless and Sara totaled to $600,000 in damage" - Tighten by deleting "to"?


 * Link Florida Keys, Central America, and Cuba on first use in the lead?


 * The lead should summarize the whole article. A mention of the railway workers, the pineapple plantations, and the cloud-seeding experiment of 1947 would not be amiss.

Meteorological history
 * "while located in the southwestern Caribbean Sea" - Link Caribbean Sea?


 * "However, the system weakened into a tropical storm by October 14, but restrengthened... " - The "however" and the "but" don't make a very good combination. I'd just delete the "however". You don't need a comma before "but" in this sentence. The verb is compound, "weakened" but "restrengthened".


 * "As the hurricane began to turn northeastward, the storm continued to intensify, becoming a Category 3 hurricane by October 17." - To avoid repeating "hurricane", "storm", "hurricane", you might use "As the hurricane began to turn northeastward, it continued to intensify, reaching Category 3 by October 17."


 * "The hurricane continued to approach Havana during the day... " - Link Havana?

Preparations and impact
 * "The town of Bluefields suffered moderate damage... " - I would add "Nicaragua" to Bluefields since many readers will not know where Bluefields is. Ditto for other towns and cities in this section; I'd identify the country in each case.


 * "to fruit plantations in Costa Rica" - Link Costa Rica?


 * "totaled to $1,000,000" - Delete "to"?

Cuba
 * "However, none were killed or injured in the city" - "None" is singular, but "were" is plural. Perhaps it would be better to say "However, nobody was killed or injured in the city."


 * "and another 150 tobacco barns" - This is the first mention of tobacco barns, I think. Delete "another"?

Florida
 * "where at least 135 people died,[1] of which 104 died on Houseboat No. 4." - Smoother might be "where at least 135 people died,[1] 104 of them on Houseboat No. 4."


 * What is the connection between a houseboat and a railway line? You might add a sentence or two to explain this.


 * "The Campbell and the Sara were destroyed near the Isle of Pines,[5] and the Elmora sank." - Were these steamers too? What about Fessenden? What kind of ship was it?


 * "The railway's losses totaled to about $200,000." - Delete "to".

Aftermath
 * "The hurricane eventually led to the end of the commercial production of pineapples in Florida." - Why? I think you could elaborate here. Did the storm cause the pineapple farmers to go bankrupt? If Florida was a good place to grow pineapples, why didn't anyone else decide to grow them even if the storm put other pineapple plantations out of business?


 * "However, the similar path of this hurricane prevented the success of the lawsuits." - I think this section could be expanded to include more detail about the connection between the two hurricanes. The last sentence says "this hurricane", by which I think you mean the 1906 hurricane. I'm guessing that in the 1940s lawyers argued successfully that it was impossible to tell whether the seeding had changed the path of the 1947 hurricane or not. Another couple of paragraphs of detail might be possible, relevant, and interesting in this section.

Citations
 * Citations to books or long PDF files should include the specific page number(s) being cited.


 * Citation 18 shouldn't include the month of publication, just the year. Ditto for citation 11.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider commenting on any other article at WP:PR. I don't usually watch the PR archives or make follow-up comments. If my suggestions are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 23:54, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)
 * Thanks for the comments!  HurricaneFan 25  23:18, 1 November 2011 (UTC)