Wikipedia:Peer review/Japanese grammar/archive1

Japanese grammar

Was recently shot down as a FAC, with very valid comments (Thanks!). The biggest problem is size: c. 70KB long, caused doubly by the subject matter and lack of planning. Would appreciate help and suggestions from people with more editorial experience about how to chop it down into smaller articles. (Lack of dilligence note: I haven't yet done a survey of other grammar pages, so please don't hesitate to point me to other well done examples.) Any feedback appreciated, TIA, etc. Kaustuv 09:18, 2004 Aug 11 (UTC)

Needs an introduction. The first sentence jumps directly into verb morphology, a narrow subtopic that belongs in the Verbs section. Likewise, each major heading needs an introduction. If a reader sees the table of contents and clicks on "Verbs", the first sentence he or she sees is "Verbs in Japanese are rigidly constrained to the ends of clauses in what is known as the predicate position." This is valid information for the article, but it doesn't lead the reader into the topic.

Needs more, and more accessible, information for non-specialist in grammar as well. If you read each topic, and ask the question, "Where will the non-specialist give up in despair?" you'll see what I mean. If you provide the information the non-specialist needs first, and then delve into detail for the interested few, you'll better serve the readership.

Does not consistently follow Wikipedia:Manual of Style for Japan-related articles in matters such as romanization. Even single expressions mix romanization styles, for example, "SA-gyou henkaku katsuyō". Other oddities include macrons over e and i (へー, いいえ), romanizing katakana words in full caps and dashes for some double vowels as in Meri-.

Uses abbreviations such as aka.

Needs attention to words like pikuniku --> pikunikku, bagu --> baggu.

Assumes the reader knows Japanese. Only readers who already know Japanese will understand the significance of underlining "o yoso ni" in this example:

兄は両親の心配をよそに、大学をやめてしまった。
ani wa ryōshin no shinpai o yoso ni, daigaku wo yamete shimatta
Ignoring my parents' worries, my brother dropped out of college.

Fg2 06:43, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)