h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Tangiers - City on the Edge of Time - A1034830
Author: JT Rocketfellah - U226073

After visiting Tangiers I have read many good and bad things about the city. I believe it still to be a destination of contrasts and interest and well-worth a visit for the confident and experienced traveller. Since I have found very little real information on the city on the internet I have decided to write my own article. Hope it's informative and convinces sxome folks its worth a visit.

This is quite comprehensive and looks to be a good start.

One thing you will probably want to fix, though, is the use of first person throughout. While that's fine for entries you just write for yourself, entries that you want to get into the Edited Guide generally need to be all in 3rd person (i.e., not using the pronouns "I" or "me" or "my").

Thanks for sharing this one with us!

Mikey

Point noted - will do.

Hello again Humming Mouse,

That's the article updated now, hope it suits the H2G2 style better. Thanks for the tip.

Many thanks,

JT

What a fantastic entry! It is very detailed and informative . I only have a couple of quibbles though. Some sentences seem to run on and on, broken up by commas but still incredibly long. When I write I am guilty of this as well (I write something the same way I would speak it), so when I proofread I look for places that commas could be replaced with periods to break things up a bit. This is only a suggestion of course, but for instance: "Many brothels, both gay and straight, existed and were frequented by the western clientelle, where paid-for sex was cheap and drugs were, at that time, in abundance and, at least in the case of 'Kif' or Hashish, a habitual form of relaxation among the natives and ex-pats alike." This could broken up a bit, like this: "Western clientelle frequented the many brothels that existed where paid-for sex was cheap and drugs were in abundance. 'Kif' or Hashish was a habitual form of relaxation for natives and ex-pats alike." Using paragraph tags

would break up your paragraphs without the use of break tags
, and would make some of the sections a bit more readable. Paragraph tags will also separate the text of a section from the header. Another suggestion would be to create footnotes from your parenthetical comments -- I do this a lot as well. You might want to integrate links into your GuideML with link tags: "Details can be found on their site at: http://www.royalairmaroc.co.uk/html/airports.html" would become "Details can be found on the Royal Air Maroc Website." The bit about the girlfriend should probably be dropped, it comes off as being first person, and isn't strictly necessary. If you insist on keeping it, you may want to phrase it as 'one visitor' instead of 'a girlfriend'. Likewise, "It was however, always rather disappointing and tends to be cooked..." would probably be better off as "It can be disappointing however, as it tends to be cooked..." I think the sections on lodging, food, and other attractions are spectacular! Much better than what I would think to include on an entry, especially the section explaining the local dishes. Good Work!

This reads very well, and there are a couple of things you can do to improve readability even further.

One is to create more paragraph breaks; and to ensure that paragraphs are separated by a blank line. This helps to make it easier on the eye.

The other is to create more sentences. You tend to write very long ones - here's just one example:

Tangiers nowadays is more difficult for the western traveller to get to with few package operators now going there due to quite a few narcotics arrests over the last few years caused mainly by tourists thinking that the world of Burroughs and Kerouac still exists there.

This should really be three sentences.

And in that section, you should not assume that your readers will know exactly what you mean by 'the world of Burroughs and Kerouac'. In fact although I think you refer somewhere to 'beats' you don't ever mention the Beatniks or the Beat Generation.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the 'crits'. It certainly rings true never to proofread your own work as I've always found in my professional career - most of the time I've been editing other people's work for magazines etc.
The bit about the girlfriend I has missed - I always find it much harder proofing off the screen instead of a hard copy where you can mark it up with typesetters' and compositors' marks but I've run out of ink.
Anyway, I'll get back into it and see if I can get it suitable for re-entry this evening.

Thanks for giving it the once-over.

JT

As for Bels' comments about not assuming your readers know who Burroughs and Kerouac are, that could be taken care of with a couple of links without involving any rewriting at all . Failing that, a brief footnote would do it, I think.

Apologies, Miloso - I wrote my post but was called away before I actually posted it, then I came back and posted it without refreshing the page and seeing yours. Sorry for any inadvertent duplication there.

Looking at the test page, I now see what's happened. You need to delete all those tags. Start each paragraph with and end it with . All tags must be in Capitals. Then you can split the long paras into shorter ones, always between ...

(Also, the tags will have to come out, since that is not how Bold is used in the Edited Guide - but that's a detail that can be dealt with later...)

No problem, Bels It's easy to do, especially when compiling something like a PR response. Actually I was quite glad that my thoughts had been seconded, so long as JTR doesn't think we're picking on him...

Hi Guys!

Right, I've updated everything except the bold tags. Hope all is now well with the article.
Don't worry, I don't think you're picking on me, I know what's it's like editing to a particular style, just need to get used to the H2G2 method I guess (though hopefully there'll not be too many more changes to make).

One word though - the code in the clinic etc must be out of date though cause that's what I was following for the entry ie. the paragraph breaks etc. so maybe that needs updated too.

All the best (and now for some rest)

Rocketfellah.

Great entry. Got all the info and a nice writing style too.

Sprout

Great! have always wanted to visit Tangier and this has whetted my appetite once more.
Very informative. Obviously somewhere you enjoyed...it shows in the writing. Hope you make the guide.
Take care
boots

(that would be 'two thumbs up' )

There's an EG entry on The Beat Generation you can link to - A721199

Hi folks!

Going away for the weekend but I just thought I'd ask you guys how do I know when/if my entry has made the guide? Is it 'in' when it comes out of 'Peer Review'?

Thanks for all the help with it by the way,

Later,

JTR

You'll be told. We'll all be told. But there's a minimum stay of 7 days in Peer Review. After that it's anyone's guess. While you're waiting you might as well be writing your next entry.

Cool. Just wondering how it works.

Thanks again.

JTR

Hiya,

Since this is a tourist-oriented entry, you might want to mention two important things that sound basic but which people may not realise:

1. Morocco is a Muslim country. You do say "Morocco is mainly an Islamic country" but this is buried quite far down in a paragraph about an hotel, and I think it needs to be given more prominence!

2. The first language is Arabic. Many people speak French. In Tangier, Spanish and English are also widely spoken.

Something else I noticed here:
>>Cafes are really the focal point of social life in Tangiers. People drink sweet mint tea, take a rest.....

Actually it's not "people", it's "men". The only women you will see chilling out in cafes are foreign tourists.

Muslim culture and Muslim heritage are very important in this city, and constitute most of the interest for a tourist in terms of things to do and see. As opposed to the whole ex-pat milieu, which you could easily miss if you weren't looking for it or didn't know about it.

I liked the entry, but it's a bit one-sided and does betray your own particular area of interest where Tangier is concerned, rather than a general picture of what is interesting about this city.

Gubernatrix

Hmmm....I do agree with some aspects of what you are saying but after visiting Tangiers a few times I feel I included what people would need to know to interest them to find out more about the place. A definitive guide of the city and its complex culture would take a whole book to explain.
In terms of an Islamic society, Tangiers is mainly islamic - but not wholly so. Tangiers is also vastly different to the rest of Morocco and I don't think the same generalisations can be placed on Tangiers that are said of the rest of the country.
To comment on the fact that most of the people on the streets and in cafes are male I feel would be commenting on the islamic religion and not on the city itself - female visitors are not made to be unwelcome by the citizens, which saying there are 'only males' on the streets may imply. If you have ever visited a market in Morocco you would see that there are not only men on the streets anyway.

In terms of my 'own particular interest' in the place - what else can I comment on? I wrote the guide from my own personal experience, not from other people's so I feel I am only justyified in giving an account of what I experienced instead of relying on other guidebooks and brochures.

I will maybe put in a para about the language but, to be quite honest, I didn't feel there was any need. Tangiers, like any other destination travellers visit, speaks the same languages that everywhere else in the world does -English, French, Spanish and Arabic. Anyone visiting Tangiers would not experience any language barriers. How many travellers do you know that speak much more than English anyway?

The ex-pat entries are important because modern Tangiers is built on the commerce that the ex-pat fraternity have brought to the city. They have helped to shape the city.

Thanks for the comments but I do feel that they are a little unjustified - I wrote the article, like I said, from what I have experienced myself and, like I said, Tangiers is vastly different to the rest of Morocco. If you have experienced different things in Tangiers then that's great - but this is an account of my own personal experience.

JTR