Wikipedia:Peer review/U.S. Route 41 in Michigan/archive1

U.S. Route 41 in Michigan

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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 March 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because later this year I would like to nominate it at WP:FAC. There are a few small additions to the article on memorial highway designations and names I would like to add, but the information on it is substantially complete otherwise.

Thanks, Imzadi1979 (talk) 05:56, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

You said you wanted to know what to work on before taking to FAC, so I looked at the sourcing and referencing with that in mind. I reviewed the article's sources as I would at FAC. The sourcing looks good.

Hope this helps. Please note that I don't watchlist Peer Reviews I've done. If you have a question about something, you'll have to drop a note on my talk page to get my attention. (My watchlist is already WAY too long, adding peer reviews would make things much worse.) 13:49, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, it does. Imzadi1979 (talk) 03:18, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments — as I alluded earlier, I added the memorial designations section to the article. It probably needs a bit of a copy edit since it's brand new to the article, and I welcome suggestions on moving the section around. I'll try to get some photos, but since I now live 7 hours from my hometown, it might be a while before I take any myself. Imzadi1979 (talk) 03:18, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This generally reads well. I have a few suggestions for improvement.

Commas are needed after city-state combinations such as Miami, Florida, in the lead. It's hard to see these, I think, because the brain reads the blue link as equivalent to end punctuation. I see quite a few of these throughout the article.

Lead

"In the U.S. state of Michigan... " - Does "U.S. state" really need to be linked?

Route description

Do cities such as Marquette, Marinette and Menominee, which were linked in the lead, really need to be linked again? My feeling is that once per article is usually sufficient for cities and counties.

Rapid River to Covington

"before it turns westward to provide access to K. I. Saywer" - Sawyer is misspelled after the pipe, but more importantly shouldn't Air Force Base be included since most readers won't have any idea what K.I. Sawyer refers to?
"There it meets the eastern junction with M-28, and the two highways become concurrent for nearly 60 miles (97 km), during which they follow the Lake Superior Circle Tour." - Wikilink concurrent?

Mainline history

"The Portage Lake Bridge opened in 1959 at a cost of $13 million (equivalent to $136 million today)." - Instead of saying "today", which is vague, it's possible to use the {{CURRENTYEAR}} template, which updates itself automatically.
"The project wrapped up on November 22, 2005, when the new bridge opened to traffic." - Slang. "Ended" rather than "wrapped up"?

Portage Lake Lift Bridge

"The Portage Lake Lift Bridge connects the cities of Hancock and Houghton, Michigan by crossing over the Portage Waterway, an arm of Portage Lake that cuts across the Keweenaw Peninsula with a canal linking the final several miles to Lake Superior to the northwest." - The "with plus -ing" construction is deprecated. Suggestion: "The Portage Lake Lift Bridge connects the cities of Hancock and Houghton, Michigan, by crossing over the Portage Waterway, an arm of Portage Lake that cuts across the Keweenaw Peninsula. A canal links the final several miles of the lake arm to Lake Superior to the northwest."
"Throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the bridge was painted the same color as the Mackinac Bridge — cream and forest green — however, in the early 1990s it was repainted in a cream and robins egg blue color scheme — the same colors as the National Park Service's ship Ranger III — to some denoting Houghton as the 'Gateway to Isle Royale'." - Suggestion: recast to avoid the em dashes. Also, the comparison to the ship seems odd. Why mention the ship at all?

Memorial designations

"Sheridan served as colonel of the 2nd Michigan Cavalry in 1862, later being promoted to the rank of major general during the war." - Suggestion: "Sheridan, who served as colonel of the 2nd Michigan Cavalry in 1862, was later promoted to the rank of major general during the war."

References

Rather than repeating the details of the Barnett reference seven times, it would be good to add a "Works cited" section with the Barnett details and then change the seven refs to "Barnett, p. X" or "Barnett, pp. Y–Z" between a pair of ref tags. This makes the citations neater and easier to read. See Noël Coward, a recent FA, to see how the editors handled repeat references to books. They used "Notes" and "References" as their section heads, but "References" followed by "Works cited" is OK too.

I know from working on something else that the link for citation 30 has changed to a new url. It is here. The old one no longer works.

I hope this helps. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 03:09, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments and replies:

The air force base closed in 1995. Since then, the signs and the locals call it just K.I. Sawyer. They would call it just Sawyer more frequently, but there is a Sawyer, Mi in the LP already...

It would be easy to add "a former air force base" to the sentence. Finetooth (talk) 04:41, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

~~:*The Currentyear template is no more apparently. Any other suggestions to clear up this wording?~~ It's not a template, it's a magic word, never mind. Imzadi1979 (talk) 04:04, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I had never heard of "magic word" before, but I could see that it worked. Finetooth (talk) 04:41, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ref 30 is generated by a template. Hopefully it will be updated soon.

True, but you can use a slightly different magic word "formatnum" to replace "formatprice" in the template. That doesn't add an autoref, and you can then add your own live ref with "cite web". None of this is obvious, but I had to work through it all recently for another article. Finetooth (talk) 04:41, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't sure how to handle the Barnett references. In other articles I've done, I've included something similar to our suggestion, but there were multiple books. This is the only dead-tree source used in the article, so I wasn't sure if a subsection for a single book was overkill or not.
I tried something for the single book. How's that for an idea? Imzadi1979 (talk) 03:45, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've never seen anything like that. I think you'd be better off with a one-item section below References and above External links. Finetooth (talk) 04:41, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've incorporated the latest round of suggestions, including swapping out {{inflation-fn}} for a regular cite based on the corrected link. Imzadi1979 (talk) 15:54, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

More comments — Recent MDOT and the City of Marquette announced a project to rebuild the intersection between the east end of the Marquette Bypass and Front St on US 41. I've added a Future section to accommodate this new roundabout, which will be the first of its kind in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Imzadi1979 (talk) 07:15, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]