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

Entry: Shakespeare's Birthday - A87792079
Author: pebblederook-makes idiocy appear simple - U14291825

A first attempt at an article, lacking yet any notes/sources.

Good morning pebblederook

What a lovely surprise to find this Entry this morning. It is one of my biggest pleasures when someone new to writing for the Guide makes an appearance. Seldom do they submit Entries that are so well composed, so congratulations!

The subject you have chosen is one of interest, people love mysteries, possible solutions and explanations. I certainly learned something new about the haziness surrounding Shakespeare's dob.

This Entry compliments our existing main Entry on Shakespeare, A795602. Once your Entry makes it into the Edited Guide pebblederook, the curators should be reminded to add a link to it *from* A795602


There are a couple of things I'd suggest, the first being this paragraph:

>>>It was a long held belief that children were baptised three days after birth, and that this time scale was laid down in the Book of Common Prayer. The Book of Common Prayer does no such thing, actually suggesting not postponing baptism beyond the first Sunday or holy day following the birth 'unless upon a great and reasonable cause declared to the curate, and by him approved'.<<<


Would you amend it slightly, perhaps using the word [it merely suggests] in place of [actually suggesting]


The second thing is that you fall into writing in the first person towards the end. This is easily remedied


>>>> I think we should be glad that we do actually know the month and year he was born

Delete the [I think] and begin the sentence from [We...]

>>>>>My theory is that Shakespeare was born on 22nd April 1564

change to [A theory could be that Shakespeare was born on 22nd April.] 1564


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To sum up, I think this is really at a stage where it could be submitted to Peer Review itself. Your writing competence is much greater than you've given yourself credit for.

If you need help moving, here are the instructions.

http://www.h2g2.com/help/forum_faqs#remove


If you get into difficulties, give me a shout and I can help.

I agree entirely - this is definitely good enough to be submitted to Peer Review once the couple of minor points that Lanza has raised have been looked at.

<BB<

This is an excellent entry and one close to my heart because, unlike Shakespeare, it is a recorded fact that I was born on the 23rd of April.

My only complaint about the entry is that it has a lot of very short paragraphs, making it appear bitty. It would be better if these were grouped into a number of medium-sized paragraphs - make the paragraphs too big and it will become unreadable.

Thanks to all for the positive input. I will be getting round to editing etc, and submitting the piece for review very soon.

By the way, we're not Wikipedia here. We allow you to publish stuff without having to have a citation for every statement.

Welcome to h2g2 and well done indeed on submitting such a good entry on your first attempt. This will be a cracking addition to the Guide, thank you!

Once it's in Peer Review there are a couple of very minor things we can look at - one of which is "St Alphage". My local church is named after him, but they spell it St Alphege. They might be wrong though...

Thanks to all for your advice, I have made some amendments. I tried to place it in peer review but the link seemed to be missing. I then found that is seemed to already be in review. How did that happen; I don't know. It's a mystery (Geoffrey Rush: Shakespeare in Love).

Re; St Alphege. (Which I have restored to his official spelling).

Ælfheah (Old English: Ælfh&#275;ah, "elf-high"; 954 – 19 April 1012), officially remembered by the name Alphege within some churches (and Alphage in others), and also called Elphege, Alfege, or Godwine, was an Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Winchester, later Archbishop of Canterbury.

Also I am not sure how to add notation etc so for the moment have dumped the citations in a heap at the foot of the article, to await someone with a good heart and more knowledge (and perhaps a shovel) to explain the system.

I have now solved the mystery of the in peer review/not in peer review/in peer review situation. But I am not sharing the answer

Thanks for the clarification on Alphege/Alphage.

Regarding citations, we don't actually require them here. If you want to do it, you can use a footnote.

Here's how it works:

Here is the main part of my textThis will appear at the bottom and the main text continues seemlessly.

Hopefully that makes sense and it's not different in the current skin! (I still use an old one...)

Unfortunately, since the author is using Pliny, they won't see the parts of that message in angle brackets.

Please continue any more review conversations in the Peer Review thread. The author has moved the Entry to PR

thanks


Lanzababy on behalf of the GEs