Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/UnNews:U.K. unveils newest espionage weapon

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UnNews:U.K. unveils newest espionage weapon

Mainly concerned about punctuation and formatting in this one. —John Lydon 15:06, January 28, 2011 (UTC)

I'll give it a prodder, then. And I'll be sure to stab your punctuation to death, of course. You know how I am about punctuation... *grins slowly* 1234 ~ 02:41, 11 February 2011

Concept:	6	Ah, news... such a wonderful area of writing... I suck at it, myself. So take this entire review with a grain of salt; I don't necessarily have the slightest inkling as to what I'm talking about. On the other hand, I might anyhow, so... er... yeah. Anyhow, I do like where you go with this - could get into it a little faster, but I'll go into that later, but what you have here is a nice twist that was not what I was expecting from the source - usually it just seems to be feminists overreacting about these things, but here you have the whole espionage thing as well. You could well play with that more, mind. Instead of saying it's like a James Bond movie, you could make parallels to the films, perhaps? Little details that someone familiar with them would recognise, thus mocking the situation even further... although if you did already, I plead not being familiar with them, myself. Yeah.
Humour:	7	Mmm, overall funny piece, decent jokes woven in throughout, though the confusion with the beginning hinders them a mite, but again, I'll get into that later. Don't really have anything to add, though, except that your link jokes seem rather flat, compared to the rest of it. After making connections to political thingies, why are you sufficing with just namecalling? Instead of linking 'female activists' to 'bitch', for instance, perhaps there could be something more thoroughly mocking, perhaps some particularly idiotic incident in history to which you could refer? And if environmentalists are hippies, then what are the hippies?
Prose and formatting:	4	Overall formatting, appearance - decent, follows the UnNews style guide for the most part so far as I can tell, although I don't actually remember what the style guide says, so maybe not... but whatever. It looks like news, has the usual bits, so good. The problem is, the way it starts out is not so good, interpreting the news before it gets into what actually happened. 'In a turn of events' is actually not that good of a way to start news in general, too - turn of events from what, exactly? What's going on? What happened? Now it's something from James Bond? Leave that to the reader to sort out, or at least make the connection more subtly - your job as a reporter is to report the news, horribly twisting it in the process, of course, but reporting nonetheless, not interpreting. The interpretation lies with the reader, which you can and will of course control by just how you present it, what you mention, what you leave out, what is said in proximity with what else - thus the joke comes out. Unless you are actually attempting to parody bad newsoid things, as a general rule, don't interperet it directly, because that's not what news normally does. Leave the frame intact. I'm also not sure why you introduce the anonymous source commenting on something before introducing that on which his is commenting, though... start out telling what's going on, mon. The reader shouldn't have to read through half the piece before even finding out just what the news is; I had to look at the title (which was only on the review page, though I assume that'll change) to see what it was even about. Start with just what happened, then get into details, commentary, comparisons to James Bond, etc. That way you'll also be less likely to have awkward transitions like 'The anonymous source decided to step forward with his information after undercover agent Mark Kennedy was exposed.' That whole sentence is very strange, and it doesn't help that it's tying in something that happened later to what happened before it, which normally would have just been mentioned before it, you know? Besides that, though,it's pretty straight-forward, fits what it is, and reads fairly well aside from a pile of grammatical quirks... although usually attorneys are more formal in their speech than that. Not that it doesn't work - within the formality of the news piece, the contrast could in of itself be kind of funny to some folk. I'll be honest, though... normally I'd go ahead and fix the grammatical stuff myself on something this short, but maybe if I explain the grammatical bits and you fix them yourself, you can learn from this... or something. So I'll just leave them. 'In a turn of events that seem to...' - the subject is the turn of events, not the events, so the verb should likewise be singular - seems '...seem to be taken...' - rest of it is past tense, so should also be past tense, 'seems to have been taken'... although that is somewhat awkward phrasing, anyhow. Could lose the phrase altogether, perhaps say 'turn of events straight out of a James Bond plot' or some such. 'A former SDS officer, who requested to remain anonymous, ...' - no need to separate the clause with commas; it's a descriptor that's part of the phrase. Far as I know, it's not wrong the way it is, mind, but might be less awkward without them. 'The source commented.' - when dealing with speakers in this form, no need to end the sentences... as in, "...not shower afterwards,” the source commented, “I told..." It makes it more fluid, that way, as the source is still commenting. '...stuff like; Go on and hit...' - as much as I like to see people using semicolons, that is just not the place for one. In fact, you really don't want that kind of punctuation there at all. In general, use quotes and/or italics to distinguish speakers - in this case, within a quote, you'll want to use single quotes for each. Still separate each one with commas like you have, though, as it is a list. Also, please don't capitalise the first letter after colons and semicolons in general - that's for proper nouns and the beginnings of sentences; semicolons do not denote the beginnings of sentences. It just bugs me when people do that. '...is being accused...' Right now? Right now exactly? Or has he been accused? Either way, accused by whom? Makes for a stronger sentence if you just say 'X accused Y'. The attorney 'released the following statement' - this, on the other hand, would be the place for a colon. I'm not knowledgeably enough to say why, however. Eh, yeah. Not too much grammatically, just a pile of little things, mainly. Hope that proves illuminating.
Images:	8	Oh, blimey, that's horrible... but quite funny as well, and certainly fits the piece. Well done with that. Except for a nag about the caption being a complete sentence and thus it should end with a period, and a question of precisely what experts these are, I really don't have anything useful to say about it. Although who are the experts, eh? Experts of what? Make it seem more official and cite, why don't you?
Miscellaneous:	6	Sexy.
Final Score:	31	Main issue is indeed the presentation. Have some pretty solid ideas, and you could expand on them, but so long as you fix the interpreting the news instead of reporting it dealy and get into what's going on sooner, I don't see any problem copying (not moving; the thing lists them by creation date, not by the date in the template, which you'll also want to change) this into the main newsspace pretty much as it is. But if you do weave in a little more James Bond paralleling, or some other such whatnot throughout the entire thing, could make for a much more intriguing and humorous read. All depends on how and how much you want to develop it. Just don't let the news get too old, eh? Anyhow, hope this helps, mon. Lemme know if you've questions or whatnot, etc etc.
Reviewer:	1234 ~ 04:41, 11 February 2011

6	Concept The idea, the angle, the grand funny of the article...
	Ah, news... such a wonderful area of writing... I suck at it, myself. So take this entire review with a grain of salt; I don't necessarily have the slightest inkling as to what I'm talking about. On the other hand, I might anyhow, so... er... yeah. Anyhow, I do like where you go with this - could get into it a little faster, but I'll go into that later, but what you have here is a nice twist that was not what I was expecting from the source - usually it just seems to be feminists overreacting about these things, but here you have the whole espionage thing as well. You could well play with that more, mind. Instead of saying it's like a James Bond movie, you could make parallels to the films, perhaps? Little details that someone familiar with them would recognise, thus mocking the situation even further... although if you did already, I plead not being familiar with them, myself. Yeah.
7	Humour The implementation, how funny the article comes out...
	Mmm, overall funny piece, decent jokes woven in throughout, though the confusion with the beginning hinders them a mite, but again, I'll get into that later. Don't really have anything to add, though, except that your link jokes seem rather flat, compared to the rest of it. After making connections to political thingies, why are you sufficing with just namecalling? Instead of linking 'female activists' to 'bitch', for instance, perhaps there could be something more thoroughly mocking, perhaps some particularly idiotic incident in history to which you could refer? And if environmentalists are hippies, then what are the hippies?
4	Prose and formatting Appearance, flow, overall presentation...
	Overall formatting, appearance - decent, follows the UnNews style guide for the most part so far as I can tell, although I don't actually remember what the style guide says, so maybe not... but whatever. It looks like news, has the usual bits, so good. The problem is, the way it starts out is not so good, interpreting the news before it gets into what actually happened. 'In a turn of events' is actually not that good of a way to start news in general, too - turn of events from what, exactly? What's going on? What happened? Now it's something from James Bond? Leave that to the reader to sort out, or at least make the connection more subtly - your job as a reporter is to report the news, horribly twisting it in the process, of course, but reporting nonetheless, not interpreting. The interpretation lies with the reader, which you can and will of course control by just how you present it, what you mention, what you leave out, what is said in proximity with what else - thus the joke comes out. Unless you are actually attempting to parody bad newsoid things, as a general rule, don't interperet it directly, because that's not what news normally does. Leave the frame intact. I'm also not sure why you introduce the anonymous source commenting on something before introducing that on which his is commenting, though... start out telling what's going on, mon. The reader shouldn't have to read through half the piece before even finding out just what the news is; I had to look at the title (which was only on the review page, though I assume that'll change) to see what it was even about. Start with just what happened, then get into details, commentary, comparisons to James Bond, etc. That way you'll also be less likely to have awkward transitions like 'The anonymous source decided to step forward with his information after undercover agent Mark Kennedy was exposed.' That whole sentence is very strange, and it doesn't help that it's tying in something that happened later to what happened before it, which normally would have just been mentioned before it, you know? Besides that, though,it's pretty straight-forward, fits what it is, and reads fairly well aside from a pile of grammatical quirks... although usually attorneys are more formal in their speech than that. Not that it doesn't work - within the formality of the news piece, the contrast could in of itself be kind of funny to some folk. I'll be honest, though... normally I'd go ahead and fix the grammatical stuff myself on something this short, but maybe if I explain the grammatical bits and you fix them yourself, you can learn from this... or something. So I'll just leave them. 'In a turn of events that seem to...' - the subject is the turn of events, not the events, so the verb should likewise be singular - seems '...seem to be taken...' - rest of it is past tense, so should also be past tense, 'seems to have been taken'... although that is somewhat awkward phrasing, anyhow. Could lose the phrase altogether, perhaps say 'turn of events straight out of a James Bond plot' or some such. 'A former SDS officer, who requested to remain anonymous, ...' - no need to separate the clause with commas; it's a descriptor that's part of the phrase. Far as I know, it's not wrong the way it is, mind, but might be less awkward without them. 'The source commented.' - when dealing with speakers in this form, no need to end the sentences... as in, "...not shower afterwards,” the source commented, “I told..." It makes it more fluid, that way, as the source is still commenting. '...stuff like; Go on and hit...' - as much as I like to see people using semicolons, that is just not the place for one. In fact, you really don't want that kind of punctuation there at all. In general, use quotes and/or italics to distinguish speakers - in this case, within a quote, you'll want to use single quotes for each. Still separate each one with commas like you have, though, as it is a list. Also, please don't capitalise the first letter after colons and semicolons in general - that's for proper nouns and the beginnings of sentences; semicolons do not denote the beginnings of sentences. It just bugs me when people do that. '...is being accused...' Right now? Right now exactly? Or has he been accused? Either way, accused by whom? Makes for a stronger sentence if you just say 'X accused Y'. The attorney 'released the following statement' - this, on the other hand, would be the place for a colon. I'm not knowledgeably enough to say why, however. Eh, yeah. Not too much grammatically, just a pile of little things, mainly. Hope that proves illuminating.
8	Images The graphics themselves, as well as their humour and relevance...
	Oh, blimey, that's horrible... but quite funny as well, and certainly fits the piece. Well done with that. Except for a nag about the caption being a complete sentence and thus it should end with a period, and a question of precisely what experts these are, I really don't have anything useful to say about it. Although who are the experts, eh? Experts of what? Make it seem more official and cite, why don't you?
6	Miscellaneous Anything else... or not...
	Sexy.
31	Final score 1234 ~ 04:41, 11 February 2011
	Main issue is indeed the presentation. Have some pretty solid ideas, and you could expand on them, but so long as you fix the interpreting the news instead of reporting it dealy and get into what's going on sooner, I don't see any problem copying (not moving; the thing lists them by creation date, not by the date in the template, which you'll also want to change) this into the main newsspace pretty much as it is. But if you do weave in a little more James Bond paralleling, or some other such whatnot throughout the entire thing, could make for a much more intriguing and humorous read. All depends on how and how much you want to develop it. Just don't let the news get too old, eh? Anyhow, hope this helps, mon. Lemme know if you've questions or whatnot, etc etc.