Wikipedia:Peer review/99p Stores/archive1

99p Stores

• 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 July 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
Having created and gradually been building up this article, I think it is at the stage where it could benefit from a peer review to hopefully feedback any improvements that could be made. I hope in the near future to submit it for GA and would like feedback on whether it is on the right track.

Thanks, Bungle ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is interesting and informative. It's a good start but not yet ready for GAN. Here are some suggestions for further improvement.

• I did a bit of proofreading as I went and fixed a few minor errors. I don't think I caught them all, and I would suggest another proofing.
• The article needs a careful copyedit. Sentences like this one in the lead have too many clauses: "Although the retailer made a pre-tax loss of £1.14 million in the year to January 31, 2007, they claim that since then, consumers have become more cautious with their money and where they spend it, in response to the current economic conditions, with commercial director Hussein Lalani noticing an increase of customers from the wealthier AB social grade during the recession." I see other sentences like this one that could be improved by breaking into two sentences. Alas, I no longer have time to do complete copyedits. You might ask someone listed at WP:PRV#General copyediting, or perhaps you know someone who likes to copyedit.
• Somewhere early in the article, perhaps in the "History" section, it would be good to explain what the "p" in 99p stands for and what the "pound" in Poundland stands for. Readers who live outside the UK may be unfamiliar with the currency and may have no idea what the difference is. It might not hurt to give some equivalents in other major world currencies such as euros, francs, yen, dollars, or possibly others; normally that is not necessary, but it might be helpful in this case.
• The dabfinder tool that lives here finds two wikilinks that go to disambiguation pages instead of their intended target. Done
• I added a fair number of no-break codes to the article. They are invisible to readers. Their function is to keep digits and units from separating on computer-screen line breaks. WP:NBSP has details. You might find some that I missed.

Products offered

• "The retailer offers a large range of products in its 3,500 lines, from DIY and electrical to toys and stationary products." - What is DIY? It's customary in Wikipedia articles to spell out abbreviations on first use and to include the abbreviation in parentheses on first use as well. After that, the abbreviation alone is fine and makes sense since it has been explained. Done
• "Their best seller is 250g Galaxy chocolate bars." - "Seller" is singular, but "bars" is plural. Metric quantities are normally expressed in Wikipedia also as imperial units. Suggestion: "Their best seller is the 250-gram (8.8 oz) Galaxy chocolate bar." I used the {{convert}} template to do the conversion, but you can also do them with a calculator and a conversion table. I've already converted the liters to imperial quarts in the article, but I thought I should explain what I was doing and why. Done
• "offering customers better value" - This seems to be an editorial judgment rather than a verifiable fact. Suggestion: "The business buys a third of its products from the Far East, allowing for gross margins of up to 50 percent." Done

Store expansion

• "In April 2006, the retailer secured an £8m cash injection from its venture... " - Does £8m mean £8 million? It's best to spell it out. Done

Customer base

• "Commercial director Hussein Lalani has noticed a lot more consumers from the AB social grade in his stores, expecting this trend to continue even after the economy recovers." - It might be good to explain in the text what the A and B stand for. Outsiders will have no idea. Done

Product sale to underaged customer

• "The company were also fined £3000 in February 2006, after staff in their Acton and West Ealing stores were caught selling 18 rated dvds to a 15-year-old boy during a council sting operation." - This needs to be explained more clearly for readers who live outside the UK. What is an 18-rated dvd? Is it a digital video disc (DVD) with pornography? Could it be something other than pornography? Also, you might wikilink sting to help readers who might find the term puzzling.

Reviews

• "Some reviewers note that they have seen several items cheaper from other retailers; however mostly the products on offer at 99p Stores are of good value." - The correlation between "cheap" and "good value" is sometimes seen as contradictory. I'm wondering if any of the reviewers have expressed this view; if so, their ideas should be represented in the article too.
• "Reviews on dooyoo.co.uk show an average rating of 4.5/5." - This will probably be meaningless to readers who live far away. What is dooyoo.co.uk? What do the rating numbers mean? Is this on a scale of 1 to 10 on which 10 is the best possible score? What exactly is being rated?

Images

• MOS:IMAGES says in part, "Do not place left-aligned images directly below a subsection-level heading (=== or lower), as this sometimes disconnects the heading from the text that follows it. This can often be avoided by shifting left-aligned images down a paragraph or two." For this reason, the image under "Products offered" should be moved down or to the right. Done
• MOS:IMAGES also suggests using the "thumb" setting for most images rather than choosing a specific pixel width.

References

• Citation 18 has a dead url.
• Citation 10 links to a general Epson site that seems to say nothing about the 99p stores.
• WP:MOSNUM says to use the same format for all of the dates in the reference section. The existing article has a mixture of yyyy-mm-dd dates and d-m-y dates. You need to choose one format and stick with it. The date formatting in the main text also has to be consistent within the main text but does not have to be the same as the date formatting in the reference section.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 23:04, 27 July 2009 (UTC)