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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A678350

Hello everyone, this is my first crack at any writing whatsoever, so i was looking for something unusual to do.

I'm sure there are plenty of criticisms to be had, and i'll be receptive to all of them as long as they're at least semi-constructive i.e. i don't want you calling it "the most pathetic thing i've ever read" without giving me at least 3 enviromental ways of disposing of said article.

Believe me, i know this doesn't even approach perfect, and i'm looking for any way to improve it, large or small, thank you

Cheers,
Zach

This is a wonderful entry. It should certainly be part of the guide.

You've confused its and it's in a few places: its means belonging to it while it's means it is or it has.

You don't mention that the name of the country for many years was "French Territories of Affars and Issas".

You've said "Afar" with one f in one place and "Affars" with two f's in another place.

Guide entries are not supposed to have first person (I and me) in them. Rephrase the last line or get rid of it. The bit about you personally getting number 4444 can be rephrased as "this researcher".

Guide entries are not supposed to have "f**k off" in them. While it may be factually correct, it will offend some people, so you will almost definitely need to rephrase that bit.

A bit of GuideML would help but is not essential. If you don't do it, the subeditors will later.

Hiya,

This is good stuff - fun and nicely written.

You seem to have some difficulties with apostrophes generally - Have another look at the title, for example.

More generally, I just want to point out that your piece comes across as quite negative. This is done in the form of irony and I don't want to suggest that you can't do so. Just that overall that is the way the entry leans. Perhaps some reflection of this in the title might be worthwhile.

I like the opening jokes about 'who' Djbouti could be.

I felt that your description of its geographical location was a bit tricky to follow. Could you name some of the countries that border Djbouti, perhaps?

You have provided subheadings but do you know about GuideML and Your subheading here tags? This would break your piece up better, I think.

If you don't know about GML, try the official guide here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A187229

Or find an entry that you like the look of and try this method: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A662384


For a first effort this looks good. You can probably afford to post it to Peer Review right away - you will probably get more feedback that way and I don't think people will be too harsh on this, it is very much up to standard in most ways. I think it would be worth having a check through for apostrophe probs or occasional typos first, though. It's amazing how easy some of those things are to miss even after an initial re-read.

Good luck with this and future writings,

Spiff

I just wanted to say thank you to both Spiff and Gnomon for their feedback. I'm making a list of the suggestions you guys had and I plan on improving my work any way I can. I didn't really know that guideML even existed until you mentioned the link, but i do know HTML, and it doesn't seem that dissimilar. My apostrophy work would put a 3rd grader to tears of shame, I agree, and I thank you guys for not righteously damning me into the netherhell after seeing it.
I look forward to righting some other articles after this, but i sincerely thank you guys for providing some constructive criticism.

Sorry to double post, but i just realized that i may be able to keep the name, if i put in the introduction something along the lines of...

"Most tourist guides are designed to encourage the armchair tourist to actually get out and get moving. Obviously, the people who wrote these guides have never been to Djbouti..."

The problem is that it comes off as if i have been to Djbouti, which i have not. And it seems to set a tone of a first person narrative.

Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'The Writing Workshop' to 'A Tourist's Guide to Djibouti'.

It's now been picked from Peer Review for the Edited Guide!