Wikipedia:Peer review/William de Corbeil/archive2

William de Corbeil

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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.

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I've listed this article for peer review because…it already had one round back last year, but I've made some additions and corrections and would like to take it to FAC at some point. Prose and prose flow are big concerns, as is any missing context that isn't obvious to a non medievalist.

Thanks, Ealdgyth - Talk 19:53, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good work, so far as I can see. Maybe, and just maybe, lenghtening the lead with a few more details, but that's the only thing that comes to mind to me anyway. John Carter (talk) 13:40, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This is most interesting and illuminating. I did a bit of minor copyediting, and I have a few suggestions for improvement. None is onerous.

Lead

"William was soon involved in a dispute over primacy... " - Wikilink primacy?
"He was known as a builder, having built the keep of Rochester Castle in England." - To avoid repeating "builder", "build", perhaps "constructed" instead of "build".

Early life

"and was present at the translation of the body" - Wikilink translation if that is what is meant?
"primacy of the see of Canterbury" - Wikilink see?

Archbishop of Canterbury

"The monks of the cathedral chapter and the bishops of the kingdom disagreed on who should be elected; with the bishops insisting on the election of a non-monk, and the monks insisting that they alone had the right to elect the archbishop and that the new archbishop must be a monk." - The "with plus -ing" construction is deprecated. Perhaps this would be better: "The monks of the cathedral chapter and the bishops of the kingdom disagreed on who should be elected. The bishops insisted on electing a non-monk, and the monks insisted that they alone had the right to elect the archbishop and that the new archbishop had to be a monk."
"However, only two bishops in either England or Normandy at this time were monks (Ernulf Bishop of Rochester and Serlo Bishop of Séez), and no monk other than Anselm of Canterbury, Ernulf, and Ralph d'Escures had been elected to an English or Norman see since 1091, so recent precedent favored the bishops." - A bit too complex. Suggestion: "However, only two bishops in either England or Normandy were monks (Ernulf Bishop of Rochester and Serlo Bishop of Séez), and no monk other than Anselm of Canterbury, Ernulf, and Ralph d'Escures had been elected to an English or Norman see since 1091. Thus recent precedent favored the bishops."
"William refused to concede that Thurstan, archbishop of York, was independent of the see of Canterbury, an attempt by Thurstan to solve the long-running Canterbury-York dispute that dealt with the primacy of Canterbury over York." - The last phrase seems tacked on in an awkward way. Suggestion" "William refused to concede that Thurstan, archbishop of York, was independent of the see of Canterbury. Thurstan had claimed independence as a way to resolve the long-running Canterbury-York dispute dealing with the primacy of Canterbury over York."
"William was the first Augustinian consecrated Archbishop in England, a striking break with tradition that had favored monks in the see of Canterbury." - Couldn't an Augustinian be a monk?
"However, King Henry I and of the emperor Henry IV, King Henry I's son-in-law managed to persuade the pope... " - There seems to be an extra word here. Delete "of"?
"A compromise between York and Canterbury was hammered out" - Slang. Perhaps "was reached"?
"allowing York the supervision of the dioceses of Bangor, Chester, and St Aspah" - Wikilink diocese?
"the pope nixed it and substituted his own solution" - Slang. Perhaps "the pope rejected it"?
"However, this was merely a postponement of the problem, as neither Thurstan or William had renounced their claims." - Subject-verb disagreement. Suggestion: "However, this merely postponed the problem, as neither Thurstan nor William had renounced his claim."
"In 1127 the council condemned the purchase of benefices or the entry to clerical orders or of entry to religious houses." - I think this should be re-cast to make clear what was being forbidden. "Benefices" is clear, but "entry to clerical orders" seems a bit vague, and "entry to religious houses" might be misunderstood if taken literally to mean walking through doors into churches.

William an architect

Shouldn't the section head have a comma, thus: 'William, an architect?
"at Rochester was built within the stone curtain walls" - Wikilink curtain walls?

Footnotes"

I'm used to seeing the parts of a footnote separated by commas. It might be that no commas is OK, but I'm not sure.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. Finetooth (talk) 04:17, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They will, thank you very much. I'll work on these in the next few days. The one reply is that Augustinian's are an order of canons, so they aren't strictly speaking monks. The exact reason why is just one of those weirdnesses of history. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:19, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've taken care of all of these, if you have time to double check them it'd be great! Ealdgyth - Talk 14:09, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Further Finetooth comments: Most of the changes look fine to me. On my most recent read-through, I noticed a couple of things I missed on the first round; I thought of a couple of further possible refinements, and I have a question prompted by curiosity.

Titles

I think Archibishop of York should have a capital "A" in the lead and elsewhere because it is part of a formal title. In places where "archbishop" is used in a more general sense, it gets a small "a". Probably "Bishop of Durham" and "Bishop of London" in the "Early life" section should get big "B"s on the same grounds, just as Bishop of Rochester does in the next section down. Just plain "bishop" used in a general sense would get a little "b". You might look through the whole article again to make sure the capitalization of the proper-noun titles and lower-casing of the common nouns are correct and consistent.

Early life

"Later he became prior of the Augustinian priory at St Osyth in Essex,[7][8][8]." - This one's got a duplicate ref, two 8s.

Archbishop of Canterbury

"William refused to concede that Thurstan, archbishop of York, was independent of the see of Canterbury.[10] William refused to concede that Thurstan, archbishop of York, was independent of the see of Canterbury." - Echo sentences. Probably the second one should be deleted since it is the unsourced version.
"Thurstan had claimed independence as a way to resolve the long-running Canterbury-York dispute dealing with the primacy of Canterbury over York." - On second thought, this would be even better if one of the Canterbury-York repetitions were deleted, although the link could be kept with a pipe, thus: "Thurstan had claimed independence as a way to resolve the long-running dispute dealing with the primacy of Canterbury over York."
"However, this merely postponed the problem, as neither Thurstan or William renounced their claims." - This one hasn't been fixed and still has a subject-verb agreement problem. "Neither" is singular and takes a singular verb, "his". This forces "claims" to become "claim"; i.e. "neither renounced his claim". You might compress the phrase to read: "neither archbishop renounced his claim".

William as an architect

The comma question is answered, but on this round I'm noticing that "William" repeats a word from the article title. The Manual of Style suggests avoiding this. A solution might be to shorten the section head to "Architect".

General question

It appears that the Canterbury-York compromise gave Canterbury more power than York. I wondered, though, if the dispute ever ended, even centuries later, in a formal declaration that Canterbury had primacy. If so, it might be worth adding the date of any such conclusion. Maybe this could appear in the main text, or maybe it would be better in a footnote. Or maybe it never happened. If so, does a rivalry still exist? Finetooth (talk) 21:38, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]