User:Tony1/Advanced editing exercises: Difference between revisions

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Latest revision as of 22:28, 10 August 2025

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{{User:Tony1/Writing exercise box}}

'''Please note: the exercises are intended to be done in your mind; saving edits means the page has to be reverted.'''

Skilled editing is central to achieving high-quality Wikipedia articles. Each exercise below will present you with a portion of faulty text. It may contain problems of grammar, logic, cohesion, tone, lexical choice, punctuation or redundant wording. In some cases, there are breaches of Wikipedia's [[Manual of Style|Manual of style]].

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==Group 1==

===Teen pop idol ===

He was a teen pop idol from 1964–1979, and since then he hadhas forged a career as an adult contemporary singer.

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*The second "he" can be removed through [[Ellipsis (linguistics)|ellipsis]]—that is, it's at the very start and the reader will silently carry it over into the second clause if it's removed; oddly enough, this ''helps'' the cohesion of the text by forcing the reader to psychologically bind together the two clauses.

}}

===Canadian politics ===

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{{editing exercise

|1=Hints

|2=*Is "were" still the right tense?

*Do you ''increase'' a welfare state?

}}

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|2=The welfare state bit is only one way of clarifying it.

}}

===Committee grows tired of chairman===

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{{editing exercise

|1=A solution

|2=Due to his background in taxonomy and paleontology, Cope <font color=red>'''focused on'''</font> evolution <font color=darkgreen>'''in terms of'''</font> changing <font color=red>'''structure'''</font>, rather than Darwin's <font color=red>'''strategy of emphasising'''</font> geography and variation within populations.

}}

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|2=This is only one way of doing it.

}}

===Record number of goals===

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===Somerset===

[This example comes from thea lead, which provides a sequence of summary statements about the subsequent text in the article.]

Agriculture continues to be a major part of the economy of Somerset. Apple orchards were once plentiful, and to this day the county is linked to the production of strong cider. The unemployment rate in the county is lower than the surrounding counties. The largest employment sectors are retail, manufacturing, leisure/tourism and health/social care.

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*<font color=chocolate>'''The MoS breach:'''</font> Slashes are '''[[Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Slashes|usually avoided]]'''.

}}

===Jane Zhang===

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*The comma after "process" is turned into a semicolon to enable the readers to pause and gather their thoughts momentarily; the next clause is turned into a grammatical sentence starting with "this", not "which". In any case, "which meant that" is clumsy; better to say it plainly.

*<font color=darkred>'''During austerity'''</font> isn't quite right, and the meaning is clearly that both the war ''and'' the post-war period involved economic austerity. We've presented one way of rewording, which would need to be confirmed by the FAC nominator.

*A user has suggested that "a number of" and "new" may be redundant. Removing "a number of" could emphasisemphasise the global significance of the developments: "a number of" seems to constrain the claim a little; I agree that in some circumstances, "a number of" is just clutter. "New developments" is probably not redundant, since it contrasts with existing or previous developments (which may not yet have been incorporated).

}}

===Chain-driven valve gear===

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<div style="clear:both;" class="NavFrame collapsed">

<div class="NavHead" style="text-align:left; height:2em; font-size:100%;">

'What is the issue?

</div>

<div class="NavContent" style="text-align:left; display: none;">

*The order of the sentences will need to change, and some of the boundaries between them changed. We've numbered the ideas and presented them in the raw sequence.

# The actual cause of Poe's death remains a mystery.

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</div>

<div style="clear:both;" class="NavFrame collapsed">

<div class="NavHead" style="text-align:left; height:2em; font-size:100%;">

HINTS

</div>

<div class="NavContent" style="text-align:left; display: none;">

*There's a mystery before there's speculation.

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</div>

<div style="clear:both;" class="NavFrame collapsed">

<div class="NavHead" style="text-align:left; height:2em; font-size:100%;">

Solution

</div>

<div class="NavContent" style="text-align:left; display: none;">

The answer is:

*'''2.</br>

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*Always keep a look-out for repeated words that lie close together in the text—that is, unless they're ''necessary'' to pinpoint the same item for the reader (especially technical terms).

}}

--><noinclude>[[Category:User styleessays guideson style|Advanced editing exercises]]</noinclude>