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

I am blowing my own trumpet here, but I think you will like my article to be put into the edited guide. (I hope!)

Very nice!!! I'll suggest this to the Peer Review Board: http://www.h2g2.com/PeerReview

Hi Gandalf,
I'm here on a scouting mission, sent by the Peer Review page.

Your article's got a lot of promise, we're always keen to see people writing about their home towns. It'll look a lot nicer if you can convert it to GuideML (this can be done from the Edit page), especially if you go onto use some of the formatting, eg

History

(although Sub-Editors will apply any necessary GuideML at a later stage, making it look good now will improve its chances of acceptance). NB you'll have to surround all your paras with ... tags.

You could make the "turning points of history" section an unordered list (ask me if you're not sure how), again to jazz it up a bit, visually.

Small points:
Should "Courtaud's" read "Courtauld's"?
Night Cubs and Pubs might also look nice as unordered lists.
Talking of famous footballers connected with Preston NE, don't forget Sir Bobby Charlton was the manager there (Shankley as player, Charlton as manager... if only it had been the other way round)!
What would one find in the Harris Museum?

I really like Preston - my godson lives there, so I go as often as I can - and it'd be great to have an Edited entry about it.

GVI

One last point - can you read it through again and make sure that each sentence makes the sense you intended?

Sections such as "building as was they did a road as they passed" sound a bit funny - perhaps you meant to say "building a road as they passed, as was their way".

Also, the sentence "James Edward Stuart proclaimed himself King of England" doesn't actually say he did that in Preston - if he did, it's worth adding a "there"; if not, it should probably be mentioned in the brackets where you tell us he was the Old Pretender.

Preston was "one of the most prosperous towns in Lancashire, which at that time included Manchester and Liverpool" - can you say this a bit more clearly? Are you trying to say thet M&L were in Lancashire then, or that they were among the most prosperous towns? Don't get caught up by the act they're not in Lancashire any more - it's clear they were at the time you're talking about.

The sentence about the Flea markets also seems a little confused, or confusing.

I may be dumb or just a Southerner, but I'm not really clear what either a "flag market" (which I guess is not only for selling flags) or a "Pot Fair" (which may well be for the selling of pots, though probably not of Pot ) might be. A simple sentence (just as you did with the Preston Guild) would be perfect.

Perhaps if you don't know anything about the nightclubs in Preston you shouldn't mention them - or search the Guide for someone else who mentions the town and ask them if they know anything about them.

The other thing to mention is, the Edited Guide entry won't have in the personal references, the "I"s and "me"s. This won't affect your local copy of the article (the edited article will be additional), but it's standard practice for the more "official" entries.

Okay. I think we have something good that can happen here.

.. I meant "...caught up by the Fact that they're not in Lancashire...", of course

Hi GVI!
Done some amending as you suggested.

However, as I pointed out to Gavroshe (Scout) on his suggestions on my article about Homebrew, I an a techno - nerd who has just got his head round XL, Word and Outlook!!

Sorry, but I don't know the first thing about GuideML, HTML or Ordered Lists!!


'G'

Don't worry about the XML Gandalf, the words and ideas are the important thing - as it is, I think the layout looks much neater for the extra space, the SubEd can have fun doing the rest (my comments above can be a hint for him or her!).

I think it's looking good now, and we have to wait for the next stage in the process, which is for it to be picked for Sub-Editing (your post on the Peer Review page will be updated then), and if all goes well then a few weeks after that it will become an official Edited entry

In the meantime, if anyone else from Preston visits here and has comments, please add them to the forum...