Talk:W. Somerset Maugham

WP:Biography attributes

The following attributes should be added. In WP:Biography, the military history attributes of the following should be added: |military-work-group=yes|military-priority= - I'm leaving the priority blank as someone with more knowledge of the article can independently assess its importance. The a&e-priority= - Priority I thought wasn't included on a second look, it was indeed there. No need to add that, only the MILHIST in the WP:Biography. Adamdaley (talk) 04:50, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

bisexuality needs mentioned

W. Somerset Maugham was bisexual, and So were his male partners. This is a well known biographical fact and needs to be mentioned in the Wikipedia article.100.34.234.175 (talk) 03:38, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Have you considered reading the article? You will see that Maugham's relationships, gay and straight, are addressed throughout. Tim riley talk 08:36, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Minor copyedits

Hi Tim riley. Can you help me understand what isn't beneficial about the copyedits you reverted here? Middle-aged is hyphenated. Authoress is an outdated term, and not gender-neutral. Conforming to norms and exacting tolls on both read more natural to me, though I concede both could go either way. gobonobo ^{+ c} 10:53, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

The article has been through a recent peer review and a featured article assessment by several editors. The points you make were not at issue in either review, but as you raise them now: "Conform with" has been standard English since at least the 18th century; "conform to" is perfectly acceptable, of course, but the "con"/with connexion is strong. You added a superfluous AmE-style comma (in the King's English we add them where they are helpful to the reader, and not as a robotic rule, so that in, say, "on first meeting Joyce Beckett became his admirer" could have the reader momentarily wondering who Joyce Beckett was if we omitted to add a comma after Joyce", but the opening lines of the Bible are perfectly fine without one in "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth".) What you say about "authoress" is in general true, I think, but see the COD (and the current edition of Fowler): the word is still used "when sex is purposely emphasized", which is the crux of Maugham's story, and is why I chose the word. By all means hyphenate middle aged in the alt text, though I don't think it will affect the user of a screen reader either way. One can find rare examples of "exact on", but "exact from" is the norm (OED). I'm glad you chose the article talk page for your comments. Aggrieved editors sometimes leave their objections on another editor's talk page, where they will be unseen by most. Much better to have them where all interested editors will see them and can comment ad lib. Tim riley talk 11:48, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

@Tim riley: Thank you for the reply and, I should have said from the outset, thank you for this delightful and well-written article. I surrender to your logic (and appreciate the explanations), with the exception of the inclusion of the term authoress. My copy of Fowler's says of authoress, "like many other female designations that stress gender irrelevantly, it is now largely verboten". OED notes, "the gender-neutral author is now often preferred" and Collins English Dictionary labels the term "old-fashioned or derogatory". The pronoun in that sentence already carries the burden of stressing her sex and our manual of style directs us to "use gender-neutral language" (MOS:GNL). gobonobo ^{+ c} 16:02, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

The beauty of having discussions like this on the article talk page is that other editors interested in the topic can have their two'pennorth. If there is a consensus to neuter Mrs Forrester's calling I'll of course go along with it. Meanwhile, thank you so much for your kind words about the article. It is always pleasing to get a pat on the back. Tim riley talk 16:40, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Copy edit redux

The wording "fend off the encroachments of age" may well be appropriate for a novel, but the purpose of an encyclopedia is to straightforwardly convey information. "Prevent aging" conveys exactly the same information with 1/5 of the verbiage. What justifies overly flowery language, and in an FA? Similarly, abusing passive voice in the lead makes it less readable; I'm certainly open to different wording than my shot at it, but I find "marred by senility" even more clunky to read than "mistakes were made". The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:15, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

An encyclopaedia is also supposed to deal in facts. Nobody can prevent ageing (or even "aging" as you spell it). I don't know what your schoolteachers have told you, but the passive voice is not the spawn of Satan, and is useful in the right place, as here. Why do you imagine all the reviewers of this Featured Article have approved the text? Or do you know better than everybody else? Tim riley talk 19:31, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

• passive voice is not the spawn of Satan – Sure, but that doesn't mean every use of it is a good choice.
• Why do you imagine all the reviewers of this Featured Article have approved the text – I imagine it's because they aren't the gods you imagine them to be, and didn't recognize writing that can be improved when they saw it.
• do you know better than everybody else? – He very well might know better. And a bunch of us working together are are more likely to know better.

EEng 08:08, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

That an article was approved as an FA doesn't mean the wording is set in stone, people copyedit FAs all the time. (You may have guessed that I'm American, I'm usually good with ENGVAR but I'd forgotten that one) I'm sure you're familiar with "omit needless words", using 6 words to say what can be said in 2 adds verbiage without adding understanding. And I didn't say the passive is Satanic, only that in this instance it's clunky and takes our readers for fools; it's unlikely someone would think his life was enhanced by senility. Would also appreciate an outside view on this. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:59, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

People perpetrate comma splices all the time, as above, but that doesn't make them good writers. You appear to have missed the point that your proposed two words are inaccurate and the despised six words are accurate. But by all means see if you can assemble a consensus in support of your contentions. Tim riley talk 20:03, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Care to point out the inaccuracy? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:11, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

He's still going on about how prevent aging is a blunder but attempted to fend off the encroachments of age is all factual and literal. Which is nonsense, see below. EEng 08:08, 18 November 2023 (UTC) Note: Sentence fragment and comma splice employed for shock value, thanks.

• fend off the encroachments of age and marred by senility are phrases that I would expect to see from a book, and not an encyclopedia entry. I agree with The Blade of the Northern Lights above that this is flowery language and I find their copyedited version to be better. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 04:50, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
• Once someone starts arguing (or argueing, I guess) that prevent aging (or ageing) is wrong (because "Nobody can prevent ageing"), while fend off the encroachments of age is concrete and factual (as if age literally makes "encroachments" which one might attempt to "fend off"), then we can safely make a provisional determination of blind article ownership. Not that I would have made precisely the same edits as BOTNL did:
  • "Senility" and "memory loss" aren't the same thing.
  • I actually don't mind marred by senility in its second use, in the article proper, because it's part of a larger list of things that marred M's final years; but in isolation, in the lead, it indeed sounds a bit flowery. I'd have to think about what to substitute, however.

But the main point -- that this article's prose can stand some deflating -- stands. EEng 08:08, 18 November 2023 (UTC)