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

Entry: Glenn Miller (1904-1944) - A2566640
Author: Farlander - detached from reality - U206300

Hello there,

This is Part 1 of my Glenn Miller article. Part 1 - 'The Mysterious Disappearance of Glenn Miller' can be found at A2574452.

I'd initially intended to keep both parts together; however, both sections combined would clock a terrifying 8,000 (or so) words. So for the sake of not killing off reviewers I decided to separate them after all.

I've tried to give this as thorough a spellcheck as possible; however, it's entirely possible that my Microsoft Word might have committed spello treachery yet again, so I would be grateful if you could catch them. I would be equally for your comments and suggestions regarding the article in general. Thanks.


Farlander.

This is a good, well-written entry.

I find the reference to Elmer's parents as a 'couple' and then using 'the couple' in the next sentence to refer to Elmer and his wife is confusing. Could you find some other way to say this?

You'll have to change your dates to the House Style:

March 1, 1904 --> 1 March, 1904
August 12, 1942 --> 12 August, 1942

Some other Americanisms which should be changed:

airplane --> aeroplane
bought over the house --> bought the house

There appears to be a word missing from this:

he decided volunteer service to his country

There's a missing full stop after "German troops)".

Some I'm not sure of:

Brunshwick - are you sure of this spelling
Queen Elisabeth - should that be Queen Elizabeth?
sprung up - should that be sprang up

Gnomon! Hello!

First and foremost, *thank you* for catching my typos! (Yes, I spelt Brunswick wrong! And Queen E's name!) I've fixed all the mistakes; hopefully I haven't introduced any more.

Just a question - when you said the 'german troops)' bit was missing a full stop, er, should the full stop go before the closing bracket or after? This is something I was never really clear about, and have therefore avoided wherever possible.


Far.

PS: I've changed 'the young couple' to 'Elmer and Mattie Lou'. It sounds somewhat odd, but I don't know the names of Elmer's parents, and I don't want to give away the Miller name too son, so that was the only compromise I thought possible.

The full stop should go after the right bracket.

You still have 'couple' referring to Elmer and Mattie Lou, so it doesn't really work as it is.

Oh rot! You mean I've used that phrase more than once? Okay... do you think this would work: I'll just call Elmer's parents 'a man and his wife', since there's only one reference to them, and I'll call Elmer and Mattie Lou 'the young couple' - would that be clearer?

Sounds better.

Done! Thanks.

Love it Farlander

Great entry - I can't hear Glen Miller's name without seeing Jimmy Stewart, in the film, in my minds eye. And the scene at the end - Little Brown Jug

Thanks, McKay!

I'd dearly love to get my hands on that movie, but it's not available here and costs a small fortune at Amazon, so it looks like I'll have to wait for the DVD version to arrive at local stores... Oh, and by the way, Little Brown Jug is my favourite Miller piece!

Excellent Entry, Farlander

If you want to save a sub five minutes work, you could replace all the 'smart' quotes with 'straight' quotes, but it's not essential

Excellent article! The only thing that really jumped out at me as being wrong was the following phrase at the end of the 4th paragraph under "His Wartime Contribution": " rather punish Miller for his insolence, the Army let him have his way." It should be "rather than" unless I'm more out of it than usual

Gaargh! Microsoft Word ate my words! Thanks, Jeremy

Danny, er, what are 'smart quotes'? This is the first time I've heard of 'em.

'Smart' quotes are another Bill Gates invention (as far as I can tell)...

If you compare the quote marks (' and ") in your article, you'll find they're more 'curly' than the standard ones used in the Guide (including this post). This is something that Word does automatically as part of the 'Auto-format as you type' feature...

Oh... you mean we're to use the *normal* (') instead of the curly one? Gosh, I'd always thought it was the other way round!... did you know, I painstakingly cut and pasted *all* those curly ones in this article? Count 'em...

Oh dear... Erm... forget I mentioned it

I've decided to be kind to the sub-eds, and have changed the smart quotes to the straight ones... that is, all the ones I spotted. Any curly quotes that I missed are therefore the sub-ed's problem. ... It would be terribly funny if *you* were to wind up with it, though!

A very thorough and informative entry! In truth I read it to make sure you mentioned the Gold Record for Chattanooga Choo Choo... did you know that nowadays a million sales gets a Platinum record, a gold is only 500,000. (not that you need to include that, just a bit of trivia for you ).

Footnotes 7 and 10 look a bit odd being included inside the quote marks, I think they should be outside the quote marks - but before any sentence-ending punctuation (I can't remember if they were at the ends of sentences or not.).

When talking about the Abbey Road recordings you say they were made in 1994 - shouldn't that be 1944?

The other thing that caught my attention is that it's a bit heavy on the footnotes, can any of them be incorporated into the text? Or perhaps a Sub will come along and tell us that's not an issue, I'm not sure what the average is.

On the whole, a fine job!

Aiee! I wrote 1994?! Thanks for spotting that...

I've changed footnotes 7 and 10, which are no longer footnotes 7 and 10 because I've incorporated some of the footnotes into the main body.

(erm, by the way, my personal record for footnotes was a glorious 41!!! A scout once nominated me for 'having the most number of footnotes in an article'; I don't know what ever became of that )

Thanks again, Miloso!

This link doesn't appear to work, Farlander (or if it does, I couldn't spot which sublink you might be referring to) - International Travel News: Remembering Glenn Miller.

There's also a small typo: financial difficulties(the venture - > financial difficulties (the venture .

Thanks, Zarquon I've fixed the link and inserted the space.