Wikipedia:Peer review/Legally Blonde (musical)/archive1

Legally Blonde (musical)
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because i feedback on how to improve it further and hopefully get it to GA standard in the future. I don't know which areas need the most work etc and wold like some comments. I have been a casual editor of this article for awhile.

Thanks, Mark E (talk) 12:00, 27 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Hello, I have some thoughts. First, the lead section is supposed to be 3-4 paragraphs, depending on the size of the article.  (I think the section can succeed with 3 full paragraphs.)  Secondly, the "Synopsis" section may be a little long.  Per WP:PLOT, such summaries should be concise, and I think that the musical can be summarized further.  I don't know what WP:THEATRE's guidelines are, but WP:FILM tries for 400-700 words for films of average feature length.  In addition, the last three subsections in "Productions" are unnecessary for the sparse amount of content under each one.  It may be better to group these as one subsection perhaps titled "Productions outside United States" or something similar.  In "Casting", per MOS:BOLD only the table headers need bold formatting, so I recommend writing the characters' names without bold or italic formatting.  In addition, it may help to stretch the table 100% across the screen.  In "Critical response", I recommend avoiding one-sentence paragraphs.  Try to merge some passages and have transitions, perhaps between related criticisms.  Some passages there seem to lack citation, though!  Review all passages in the article body and ensure that they all end with a citation.  In "Awards and nominations", I would recommend "Awards and honors" because "nominations" shouldn't really be distinct from "Awards".  You may also want to consider a table format for that section -- see Changeling (film) as an example.  Lastly, I recommend using cite news and cite web templates to write out the references.  It would help to link to some of the works, such as USA Today.  I also recommend writing the dates in full.  Which brings me to my last point; indicate in the lead sentence that it is an "American musical".  We tend to do this for non-American musicals, but we forget that this English-language Wikipedia is for a global audience and necessitates clarity about American topics as well.  Hope these suggestions help! Erik (talk) 15:22, 30 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for all the comments!!!

So far I have
 * Combined lead into 3 full paragraphs
 * Put the 3 other productions into an "International Productions" header
 * Unbolded the casting table
 * Cited the news etc + added link to USA today
 * Added american musical

Still to do (Hello new year!)
 * Tidy up Critical response section + Add citations Done, although there will be alot more incoming in the next few weeks as the show opens in London
 * Add citations where needed Done
 * Sort out the awards section into a table Done
 * Trim the plot further Trimmed as much as I can. By comparison, GA MT articles Wicked and Hair have much longer plot summaries.

Brianboulton: As promised, here are a few comments. This sounds like a very enjoyable musical and I'm not surprised that it was a hit. The main problems I found with the article were, first, a tendency to overdetail and secondly, insufficient citations in some areas. I have done bits and pieces of tidy-up copyediting as I've gone through.
 * Lead
 * Can a link be used to explain to non-American readers what a "sorority girl" is? Done
 * The phrase "succeeds in winning the trial" is unclear. I suggest "successfully defends exercise queen Brooke Wyndham in a murder trial." Changed
 * Clarify: is the official title of the show just Legally Blonde, or is it Legally Blonde: The Musical as illustrated in the infobox? If the latter, the article title should be changed. In any event I would alter the second paragraph opening to read: "The musical version of ''Legally Blonde..." etc im pretty sure its just Legally Blonde but they add "the musical" so people don't get it mixed up. Have changed it.
 * "Jerry Mitchell made his directorial debut and choreographed." Too telegraphic; I suggest "Jerry Mitchell made his directorial debut, and choreographed the dance numbers." have changed to just Jerry Mitchell directed and choreographed.
 * "The West End production..." You should specify that this is the London West End production. London's West End is as New York's Broadway so I don't think it needs to be stated.
 * "...and opens January 13, 2010. It stars Sheridan Smith as Elle Woods and Duncan James as Warner." To save having to alter the text in a couple of weeks, I suggest you replace the phrase "and opens January 13, 2010" with "prior to its formal opening on January 13, 2010." Then follow with "This production stars..." i'll change it next week when it opens, im going to one of the performances that week so will remember hehe.
 * Synopsis: I have read earlier review comments, and have to say I had a few difficulties with this section, mainly because of the following:-
 * It is still too detailed. Perhaps it's best to stick to the main storyline and leave the subplots alone.
 * Some of the descriptions are overdone, e.g. "perky, sweet, and strikingly blonde" could lose a few adjectives.
 * It isn't necessary to work into the synopsis every musical number, including reprises. When reference is made to musical numbers these should be in parentheses, otherwise it is not clear that these are numbers from the show. For example, "...he tells her that he needs someone more "Serious" and breaks up with her" needs to be reworded, as does "a Greek Chorus visible and audible only to Elle, tell her to stay "Positive".
 * Musical numbers
 * Re Paulette's former song "Good boy", you don't say when or why this was replaced. Also, the phrasing "Where Paulette's song "Ireland" is now, was the song "Good Boy"" is very awkward. Try "Paulette's song 'Ireland' is a replacement for an earlier song 'Good Boy'...", followed by the when and why information.
 * I have copyedited the sentence relating to Prof. Callahan's deleted songs
 * Productions
 * The show's nominations for seven Tony awards needs to be cited.
 * Laura Bell Bundy overlinked throughout this section
 * The North American tour and the International productions should be briefly mentioned in the lead, which is supposed to summarise the whole article.
 * There is a lot of uncited, and relatively trivial information, in the North American tour section (the last two paragraphs). In my view none of this information is worth keeping.
 * Also, uncited information (e.g. the £2 millon advance sales) in the West End section.
 * Note the citation tag in the Netherlands section.
 * Recordings
 * "The album sold 93,000 copies as of May 2008." Uncited
 * "In 2009 Sheridan Smith who is to portray Elle in London recorded a pop video of "So Much Better" with members of the cast. This was used as promotional material." Uncited, and hardly worth a mention, really.
 * Awards and honors: the sources for much of this material are unclear.

I hope these comments are helpful Brianboulton (talk) 13:45, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

From Seegoon: I can see that you have some travails ahead of you in taking in Brianboulton's recommendations, so mine will be a cursory once-over regarding style and whatnot, largely.
 * In 'Musical numbers', the tracks are delimited by spaced em dashes; either use unspaced em dashes or spaced en dashes. Whichever you choose, be consistent. For reference, using unspaced em dashes is traditionally American English style.
 * On a related note, should all song titles be in "quotation marks"? They certainly should as far as music articles go.
 * In 'Casting', the references seem arbitrarily spaced. Give it a once-over. Also, "Original Broadway Cast", "Original US Tour Cast" and "Original London Cast" have some extraneous capitalisation going on.
 * Space needed after ref #20; delete full stop after #21.
 * "SamSungDong CoEX Artium" - for one, was that 'dong' added as hilarious vandalism? Secondly, should the last word be 'atrium'? Googled it and surprising it seems to be called that haha.
 * You have a couple of raw citations (numbers 5 and 7). Beyond that, there seems to be a high degree of inconsistency in ref formatting. Consider using cite web to standardise them.

This was a pretty quick glance, so there might be more issues to iron out. I also might have repeated some other users' feedback. If so, sorry. Seegoon (talk) 16:15, 3 January 2010 (UTC)