User talk:Hog Farm/Slack blurb

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@Dying: - would you be willing to give this one a read-through? It's tentatively scheduled to run in March and I'd like to have a second set of eyes on this proposed blurb before I suggest it. Hog Farm _Talk 00:48, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

thanks for reaching out, Hog Farm. unfortunately, i don't think i will have the time to comb through the draft at the level i normally reserve for blurbs that have already been scheduled, but i will point out a few things that i have noticed so far.

i think "American Civil War" tends to be linked in tfa blurbs. i am assuming that it wasn't linked in the draft simply because the first instance in the article lead where it is linked was not included in the draft.
should there be something before "4th"? offhand, i'd suggest adding a "the". the article lead uses "the MSG's", though i am not sure if there is enough space in the blurb to explain this. (by the way, the article also seems to be inconsistent regarding how it refers to the division, using both "4th Division" and "Fourth Division".)
to me, it seems a little incongruous to refer to the union army as the "Union Army", and then the confederate army as both the "Confederate States Army" and the "Confederate army". since the latter army was also known as the "Confederate Army", would it improve the flow by simply using "Confederate Army" both times it is being referred to?
this is a very minor point, but three of the sentences start with "After", which sounds a bit repetitive.

on a more general note, i found it strange that, although the blurb describes slack as "[p]rimarily a lawyer", the impression that i got from the rest of the blurb was that slack generally found himself being promoted despite constantly getting injured, making me wonder whether or not he simply failed upwards until he got himself killed. (to be clear, the article eventually made it clear to me that he was actually competent both on and off the field.) admittedly, i don't know if this is anything that you can easily address, as i imagine that most of the notable sources that discuss him are focused on the war rather than on his legal career, and i am not sure if there is any space in the blurb to paint a more nuanced picture of slack.

anyway, i plan on looking at this blurb a little closer once it has been scheduled. i hope the above comments help in the meantime. dying (talk) 07:59, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I've amended to A peacetime lawyer which I think should indicate the nuance here - that was his primary trade, but he fought in the two major wars that required a sizable influx of volunteer soldiers. I don't know that there's space in the blurb to really get into the competence question though. I've fixed the various prose/linking issues. Hog Farm _Talk 13:47, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]