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

Entry: The End of the SS Canberra - A47897860
Author: LLWaz - U123301

A Stretcher no 4 entry. I think all the sentence last words have double letters as required but I've reread so many times, and only just caught two without.

Hope it's an acceptable EG entry also.

Hey Waz, nice work.

Regarding: "... a surface to air missile was shot down within 300 metres by HMS Fearless". I think it was a SAM launched from Fearless which shot down a missile, maybe an exocet, bound for the Canberra.

Fixed. Thanks for catching that MT, I misread that.

vacinity / vicinity (sp?)

Microsoft he say vic - fixed too! And ran the whole thing through spellcheck, corrected Argentinean and Captain. As an engineer, is it pullies - doesn't look right but my dictionary's no help?

Microsoft doesn't like slippy

I was going to read this, but it's far too late. I'll come back to it.

One suggestion:

the Australian Prime Minister of the day’s wife
the wife of the Australian Prime Minister of the day

TRiG.

You're right that that would be more proper - though I'd prefer 'the then Prime Minister's wife' if the maybe not 100% respectful wording I've used isn't acceptable.

Not much of a fan of big hats on high heels being wheeled out to launch such fantastic things as ships .

Ms GB

[Hope it's an acceptable EG entry also.]

Query about "slippy" above

Hi Waz

Forgot to mention I'll be back with some EG-style points (am just off to bed)

I see you're online, if you want to tweak something - the song titles need to be in single-quotes and the name of the ship should be in italics, but not the "SS" eg: SS Canberra



GB

Done GB, thanks.

You're welcome

<>
My dictionary gives the plural of pulley as "pulleys"

GB

You have a better dictionary, thought it looked wrong. Spelling's not a strong point - I do numbers . Will fix at lunchtime - got to get to work now

I think you have the beginnings of what could be a great entry here.

These are things I have picked up on.

Sorry what do you mean by <> ?

Is there a measurement equivalent to yards?

<> do you need that in there?

There should be a comma after the year 1997

I wonder whether you need to go into more detail regarding the old and new world.

At times this piece seems very list like, I wonder whether you could obtain comments from people who have used the boat.

<> should be 'She'd dished up five tons of cheese'.

<> should be 'She'd run aground twice, on one occasion taking four days to be set loose'.

<> should be
Of the two 15 year old stowaways who escaped discovery for two weeks.

Watch out for repetition and try to avoid it. You have <> starting a number of sentences next to each other.

Could you put links in?

as I said earlier this has great potential

Llwaz, this is interesting and informative.

But I found that it hopped from one time to another a bit too much. I understand that you want to start with the Canberra's last voyage and then go back to its launch. But then the article flits back and forward between the 60s and 70s, 1997 and the Falklands war. Do you think the account of her years of service should be more chronological?

Thank you Opticalillusion.

A skeleton staff is the bare minimum staff a business/organisation needs to be able to function. 72 was such a number for the Canberra.

There are lots of equivalents to yards - I find yards the easiest to visualise but if metric metres are preferred I'll convert them. Rods and perches are beyond me .

'cool' was to emphasise what a big investment such ships were but without being too tedious about it.

Comma, done.

I think 'Old World/New World' is generally understood, but will add footnotes if the consensus is otherwise.

I could add comments on Canberra's break up - but I'd be copying them from internet sources without asking - is that done in EG entries? There are some good comments out there, people were very attached to this ship.

4, 5 and fifteen, done.

The series of 'Of the's was intentional. I'll do something about that if the consensus is that that's not generally apparent.

Links, yes, if I find any relevant ones that add to the referenced one I have. I wanted one for Moby Dick but haven't found a good one yet. Karachi would be good too.

MVP, I thought that might be the case.

If I make it chronological though it will become the history of the Canberra rather than her end. And there'd be a fair bit more to include. Problem is I need bits of back-history to give a reason to care or be interested in what became of her.

I'll re-read it with trying to make the time shifts easier to take in mind.

If it wasn't for the double letter thing, I'd take this to the AWW and go full out populating her with ghosts - it'd take me a month to do that with double letters!

Please leave this here, it fits the guidelines. You can always do a ghost story at the AWW later?


Please leave the three "Of the" alone - it creates a perfect three strikes of the bell


We don't have an Entry on Moby-Dick but I did write A13900042 and A31189593 which mention him, you're more than welcome to take your pick of those, if you feel one would be appropriate.


<> what Opti means is could you display both, yards is fine in the text, but bracket metric for the kids. Ta.


<>
The way to do this is pick your comments then add them to your Entry thus:

I am sad about the Canberra because...&ndash; Author of the quote

That will automatically paragraph, you don't need tags

GB

That made me feel nostalgic for a ship I think I only ever saw once. Well done


>>I think all the sentence last words have double letters as required but I've reread so many times, and only just caught two without.<<


The easiest way I found of checking every sentence was to use the "FIND" tool to search for a full stop - then just keep clicking the "NEXT" button, making sure there's a double letter word before each one, until you get to the end. You have to be mindful of question and exclamation marks if you used any though.


I only spotted one thing you might want to tweak (or not):

"15 years before she’d been escorted through those waters in sunshine by a swarm of boats..."

It's those house rules I suppose. But I seem to remember that the only time you can start a sentence with a number in numerals, is when it's a year (eg. 1922 was a very wet year...). Other than that you should find some way of starting with an initial capitalised word (eg. About 15 years...; A total of 15 years -- that sort of thing).

It's generally not recommended to start sentences with numbers, but the h2g2 Writing Guidelines are perfectly happy with them.

(The other deviation of the Writing Guidelines from normal standards is their insistence on itialicising the names of Bible books.)

TRiG.

That's the only other deviation, is it, TRiG?