Wikipedia:Peer review/List of common English usage misconceptions/archive1

List of common English usage misconceptions
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because I'd like to nominate it as a Featured List. It may need some work: (1) is the inclusion criteria and other aspects of the lede sufficient? (2) Might some more images be welcome or are the ones present sufficient? (3) Are the categories comprehensive enough? (4) Are there any other issues that might prevent it from reaching Featured List status?

Thanks, Airborne84 (talk) 03:22, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Brianboulton comments: A most interesting idea for an article. Reading it through, I recognise several rules that I have always accepted as part of "good" English writing, and it is disconcerting to see them demolished. Oh, well, years of expensive education down the drain...Here are a few suggestions as to how the article might be improved:-
 * Title: You call it a list, but the page is not conventionally structured as a "list" in the WP sense. Consider removing the words "List of" from the title.
 * How comprehensive is this intended to be? Is it a listing of all the common usage English misconceptions, or just some the most common? Any limitations should be made clear in the lead.
 * The lead needs to be developed anyway, so as to become a proper summary of the article. At present the first sentence reads weakly; the reference to "a reliable source" is inappropriate since there is no universally accetped yardstick of source reliability. The second paragraph reads like an anecdote and is not within the main text of the article.
 * Lead image: has any source specifically cited this page of Stevenson's prose as evidence of the non-existence of assumed rules of English usage? If not, your choice of the page and your accompanying conclusions are OR and should not be included.
 * It is not always clear what are the sources of your misconceptions, or indeed whether they are "common" misconceptions. Those in the typography section are probably too arcane to be considered common.
 * How do the two charts (hyphen/dashes and quotation marks) help the reader?
 * On numerous occasions in the text you use direct quotations from sources. These need to be attributed in the text, not merely cited.
 * Is "semantics" the right heading for the two example that you give? The dispute concerning "irregardless" seems to be about the word's acceptability rather than meanings or changes in meaning. Likewise, questions surrounding "Xmas" are about origins rather than semantics.
 * Some of your "Notes" contain information that needs to be cited.
 * Your referencing style contains inconsistencies. For example, why is the short citation form not used for ref 7, when it is for all the others for O'Conner and Kellerman?. Also it is not necessary to give the full source details in both References and Bibliography.
 * Your link on the Greek letter Chi leads to a disambiguation page.

I have not carried out a detailed check on the propse, though I noticed sentences starting with "But..." and the odd contraction, maybe deliberately placed. I am not able to watch individual peer reviews, so if you have issues to raise concerning this review, please contact me via my talkpage. Brianboulton (talk) 22:27, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

The article is half list and and half discourse. I feel short-changed by some of the discourse and should like explanation and illustration of some of the entries:
 * Tim riley comments


 * Passive voice: I don't know that it is generally regarded as incorrect – more as flabby, flocculent and flaccid, I'd say, from what I recall of Fowler, Gowers, Vallins and the Guardian and Economist style guides. You might also give a brief example in your text of when the passive is preferable (you can't expect your reader to plough through the works you link to). I don't, by the bye, see references to formal minutes of meetings, where passives are en regle.


 * Double negatives: again, you ought to say when they are acceptable. I can't think of any examples.

The real problem with the article, it seems to me, is that it is not nearly inclusive enough to be of any help to the user. For instance, what you say about "irregardless" is reasonable comment, but much the same could be said of "disassociate". Similarly, scrupulous writers are careful about using "hopefully" (in the sense of "I hope that"), "disinterested" for "uninterested" and vice versa, "historic" for "historical" ditto, "the Queen of England", "reach a crescendo", and so on; nobody would misunderstand them if they lapsed, but educated readers would be unimpressed.

Fowler has a whole section on "Popular misconceptions of which many writers need to disabuse themselves". It begins


 * That a devil's advocate, or advocatus diaboli, is a tempter of the good, or whitewasher of the bad, or the like.


 * That a percentage is a small part.


 * That a leading question is a searching one.

and contains other popular misconceptions such as:


 * That more honoured in the breach than the observance means more often broken than kept.


 * That King Canute thought he could stop the tide from flowing.


 * That many a mickle makes a muckle.


 * That ilk means clan or the like.


 * That an exception strengthens a rule.


 * That Frankenstein was a monster.

And many more. Lots of scope to flesh out your article. I think it would help if you consider what/whom the article is for, and then go through the major authorities (Fowler etc) and pick up all the examples relevant to your subject.

Finally, let me applaud what you say about paragraphs. The WP MoS, and some of the leading Wikipedians, should take note – bravo! – Tim riley (talk) 10:41, 5 July 2011 (UTC)