Wikipedia:Peer review/Landing at Kip's Bay/archive1

Landing at Kip's Bay

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
The primary reason I would like this page reviewed is for my in-line citation style to be assessed. I wrote this B-classish article using four references, and am using a separate "References" section from the "Notes". I have only done the first section, and as it takes a bit of time, I don't want to do the rest if other editors seem to think it should be done in a different way. Anyway, let me know what you think about this - too much? Just right? Feel free to give general comments on the article, too! Tan | 39 01:02, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Kevin Myers (talk · contribs)

Your citation style is just right. You're using the Chicago style, which is best when using just a handful of sources and a lot of notes, and you use footnotes at appropriate places. The "p." is now optional in the Chicago style, by the way, since the last number is always understood to be a page number. If you decide to keep the "p.", use "pp." (the plural of "p.") for citing multiple pages, such as: McCullough, 1776, pp. 203–04. As you can see from my example, technically, an "en dash" goes between the page numbers, and you can drop the first digit of the second number when it is understood. All of these are nitpicky things not many people will worry about, but you asked!

More importantly, the article itself: the "Background" section of the article, which is the section you've footnoted, is really good stuff. You've managed to juggle the various events, including the Staten Island conference, quite well with good, clear prose. As you develop the article, we need a bit more insight into General William Howe's strategic thinking here. His fatal error at Kip's Bay, in the opinion of someone like Ferling in Almost a Miracle, is that he waited too long to land and lost his last real chance of crushing the American army outright. So we need more on this; Gruber's The Howe Brothers in the American Revolution would be of use to develop the British point of view. Good job—I look forward to reading more of your work. —Kevin Myers 15:00, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thank you! The nitpicky stuff is great. Much better than learning that my entire style is terrible. I completely agree with your thoughts on British strategy; in fact, I had a small section written for this and deleted it for lack of clarity and pretty bad prose. There's two major things missing from the article right now - Howe's delay due to well, lethargy and the Staten Island conference, and the probably apocryphal story of why Clinton stopped at Inclenberg instead of cutting off the island east/west - the Ms. Murray story.

If you look at the talk page of the article, I have an image discussion going. I have almost no experience with using images that I didn't create, and absolutely no experience with trying to find images for a long-past historical event. If anyone could shed some light or know-how onto this for me, I'd really appreciate it. Tan | 39 15:53, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]