Wikipedia:Peer review/Francis L. Sampson/archive1

Francis L. Sampson

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I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to prepare it as a Featured Article Candidate. I overall think it is one of my best-written articles and am looking for overall feedback. It is already a Good Article.

Thanks, ~Darth Stabro^{Talk • Contribs} 17:54, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

RoySmith

The writing has a choppy feel to it. By that I mean the sentences, while grammatically correct, don't connect to each other with a continuous flow. They're more a series of individual disjoint statements. As an example, here's one of your paragraphs:

After briefly returning to England, Sampson jumped into Holland on 19 December 1944, landing in a moat around a castle. Participating in the Battle of the Bulge, he ended up being captured by German forces in Belgium, near Bastogne.[1] He spent six months in a German prison near Berlin until the liberation of the camp in April 1945.[3][6] Sampson insisted on being in the enlisted area of the camp rather than the more comfortable area for imprisoned officers.[7] He received the Bronze Star for his work among the prisoners. As the camp was being bombed by Allied forces, Sampson tended to the wounded and dying.[8]

and for illustrative purposes, here it is again presented as a bullet list:

After briefly returning to England, Sampson jumped into Holland on 19 December 1944, landing in a moat around a castle.
Participating in the Battle of the Bulge, he ended up being captured by German forces in Belgium, near Bastogne.[1]
He spent six months in a German prison near Berlin until the liberation of the camp in April 1945.[3][6]
Sampson insisted on being in the enlisted area of the camp rather than the more comfortable area for imprisoned officers.[7]
He received the Bronze Star for his work among the prisoners.
As the camp was being bombed by Allied forces, Sampson tended to the wounded and dying.[8]

There's no real change because the sentences don't have any connection to each other. One way to look at this is to shuffle the bullet points into random order and see if it still makes sense. If it does, that's a hint that there's no real connection between the sentences.

This could get turned into

After briefly returning to England, Sampson participated in the Battle of the Bulge. Jumping into Holland on 19 December 1944, he landed in a castle moat. He was later captured by German forces near Bastogne, Belgium, spending six months in a German prison camp near Berlin until liberated in April 1945. While a prisoner, Sampson insisted on being in the enlisted area of the camp rather than the more comfortable area for officers. During this time, the camp was being bombed by Allied forces and Sampson tended to the wounded and dying, for which he received the Bronze Star.

I'm not entirely happy with that rewrite, but what I'm trying to illustrate is the use of connecting phrases like "later captured", "while a prisoner", "during this time" which show how the events described in one sentence are related to what came before.

I hope you find this useful. You should also google for "choppy writing". There's lots of material written on this particular issue, much of which explains it better than I can. To tie this back to WP:FACR, this is all part of prose is engaging and of a professional standard. RoySmith (talk) 11:53, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]