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

Hi Farlander

I'm subbing your entry on Infamous Historical Poisoners, the revised version of which can be found @ A4197585. I know it's a huge entry (and for making it so amazing!) but do you think you could just give it a quick look-over and make sure everything's okay? I'd be very grateful.

You'll notice your links at the bottom have disappeared; I moved them into the tag at the end of the entry, which puts them in the sidebar but not in the entry itself. That's a bit of a cleaner way of doing things, I think; but please do tell me if it is a problem for you.

I'm going away this weekend, but I'll be back on Tuesday to see if you've got any issues I should resolve.

Heya Echomike, great to be working with ya!

I'm really not a fussy person, so whatever suits you suits me (so long as you don't remove all my book references and toss them into Never-Never, I'm happy enough It happened once... by accident).

Lookin' through. I'm fine with most of the stuff Just a coupla comments though:

1. I'm not sure the brackets would work all that well in 'Enter the purveyors of poison (very often poisoners themselves) and of the fairer sex' ; it doesn't make very much sense that way because the point is that the purveyors of poison were (1) usually poisoners, and (2) often women. I suppose the bracket could be stretched to the end of the sentence, or have the thing read as, 'Enter the purveyors of poison, very often poisoners themselves, and of the fairer sex.'

2. My paragraph breaking for:

'And then Charles Cotton died.

His death proved to be Mary Ann Cotton's undoing. Prior to his death, Mary Ann had talked... etc'

was deliberate and not a mistake. I broke the thing to give the passage a pause for dramatic effect.

3. Oops, misediting. In the section on Thomas Cream:

'He narrowly avoided imprisonment twice while in Chicago, when two of his patients died under mysterious circumstances. The second one died of strychnine poisoning: an affair with the wife of one of his patients had led to the man's murder by means of strychnine-laced pills, and, subsequently, to Cream's incarceration at Joliet, thanks to the testimony of the wife.'

The second victim did not refer to the married man; it was to a second woman patient. The man was in fact the 3rd victim.

(Original: 'He narrowly avoided imprisonment twice while in Chicago, when two of his patients died under mysterious circumstances, the second one having died of strychnine poisoning; an affair with the wife of one of his patients had led to the man's murder by means of strychnine-laced pills, and subsequently, to Cream's well-deserved incarceration at Joliet, thanks to the testimony of the wife.')

I separated the death of the second (woman) and the third (man) with a semi-colon because I wanted to say that while he escaped imprisonment with the first two, the third one damned him. I suppose, to simplify things, you could just remove the semicolon in the original so that it reads, He narrowly avoided imprisonment twice while in Chicago, when two of his patients died under mysterious circumstances, the second one having died of strychnine poisoning. However, an affair with the wife of one of his patients had led to the man's murder...etc'

Once again, thanks for sub-editing this!


Far.

Thanks for your input. I'm glad to know you like to take an active role in things.

I'll respond to each of your points in turn.

1. Would you accept 'Enter the purveyors of poison of the fairer sex, who were very often poisoners themselves.'?

2. Dramatic effect noted. Far be it from me to discourage the noble art!

3. I'll use your version that removes the semicolon; I'm not a huge fan of them in very long sentences. (Though there I go, using one myself, hypocrite that I am.)

Does this all look okay to you?

BTW, I thought I'd idly mention that I'm reading Dorothy Sayers' book Strong Poison just now, which contains a death by arsenic. I immediately thought of your entry - maybe you ought to do one about famous fictional poisonings. That would be fun!

Heya Echomike,

I'm a little nervous that the 'Enter the purveyors of poison of the fairer sex, who were very often poisoners themselves' may misrepresent the poison suppliers. (Then again, I think I was already guilty of that offence in the original version!!!). Although the examples I've quoted are female, there are probably about as many males who were guilty of supplying poison to the masses; it's just that I think they're not as famous as their female counterparts... or maybe they were just better at evading the long arm of the law! Hmm, maybe we could just remove all references to their sex, or maybe simply truncate that sentence to 'Enter the purveyors of poison'... do you think that would work?

Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with what you've done for the article.

Cheers,
Far.

(I have this *abominable* tendency to write interminably long sentences linked with hyphens and semicolons, a la Kafka; it is the burden of the long-suffering editor to catch and reprimand me when I do! )

I'd be content with removing the references to the sex. I think that just leads to confusion however one phrases it. It's not really important anyway, is it? It's evident that the examples you use are female, so does it matter?

Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis, about the guy who turns into a cockroach. That's the extent of my knowledge on the subject.

It looks fine now. I'm quite happy with how it looks; are you?

Thanks again!

PS: Another example of a long-winded twit would be Jerome K Jerome, author of 'Three Men in a Boat'. Of course, he was also funny as heck, so...

I'm happy with it. I'll return it to the Eds, then.