Wikipedia:Peer review/Tropical Storm Marco (2008)/archive1

Tropical Storm Marco (2008)[edit]

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A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for May 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I'm aiming to get this article to FA but after several recent failures at FAC due to issues with prose, a more thorough review of an article is probably necessary before going to FA.

Thanks, Cyclone biskit 23:47, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: You asked especially about prose issues. Concentrating on the lead, I've made several specific suggestions for tightening the prose and making it more clear. I'm hoping you can use these examples to find other similar things further down in the article. The {{convert}} template would fix one set of problems. Other sets require a close reading and some tinkering with different ways of saying things, then picking the most direct and clear. One way of accomplishing this is to find a good copyeditor to work on the article. Another is to keep working on the exercises in WP:1a.

Lead

"The thirteenth named storm of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, Marco... " - Since you use digits for numbers bigger than nine elsewhere in the article, this should probably be "13th" for consistency. The later use of Tropical Depression Thirteen is fine because that was its formal name.
"With the influence of a tropical wave on October 4, a small low-level circulation center developed over Belize." - Suggestion: "Influenced by a tropical wave on October 4, a small low-level circulation center... ". I see this same kind of use of "with" elsewhere in the article to splice clauses somewhat awkwardly together. In the next section, "Meteorological history", for example, is "With well-developed outflow, low wind shear, and high sea surface temperatures, intensification was anticipated through landfall." Better would be "Forecasters anticipated intensification through landfall because of the storm's well-developed outflow and the low wind shear and high surface temperatures in its path." Look for phrases starting with "with" and regard them with suspicion. Some are fine, some are not.
"Marco reached its peak intensity with winds of 65 mph (100 km/h) early on October 7." - Suggestion: "Marco's winds reached their peak intensity of 65 mph (100 km/h) early on October 7." Also, WP:MOSNUM says to spell out the primary units and to abbreviate the secondary units. I like using {{convert}} partly because the template spells and abbreviates correctly, thus: 65 miles per hour (105 km/h). You can find a full list of the "convert" possibilities at Template:Convert/list of units.
"tropical storm force winds extended out 12 miles (19 km) from the center of the storm... " - Redundant. Delete "out". I see several more "extended out" constructions coupled with "from the center" further down in the article, and I would delete "out" from all of them.
"No further development took place after reaching its peak intensity." - Two problems. The development didn't reach peak intensity; the storm did. Suggestion: "No further development took place after the storm reached its peak intensity." The larger of the two problems is that this sentence either states the obvious or is not true, depending on the meaning of "development". If "development" means "strengthening", the sentence means simply that the storm didn't get any bigger than its biggest. If "development" means "change", it is not a true statement. Probably the fix here would be to delete the sentence.
"Due to the small size of Marco, only minimal impacts were caused by the storm." - Suggestion: "Because of its small size, Marco caused minimal damage."
"However, several rivers overflowed their banks due to heavy rains from Marco, one of which left two towns under 10 ft (3 m) of water." - Suggestion: "However, the storm's heavy rains led to floods up to 10 feet (3.0 m) deep that covered highways and damaged homes."

I hope these brief comments prove helpful. Finetooth (talk) 20:26, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for the comments Finetooth, they were definitely helpful :) Cyclonebiskit (talk) 21:07, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Since that seems to be it, I'm going to archive this PR and head for FAC. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 15:22, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]