Talk:Battle of Gettysburg, Second Day

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.

This article has been rated as A-Class on the quality scale.

Additional information and associated task forces:

	This article has passed an A-Class review.
Associated task forces (nations and regions):
	United States military history task force
Associated task forces (periods and conflicts):
	American Civil War task force

The following user(s) are actively contributing to this article and may be able to help with questions about verification and sources:
Hlj (Hal Jespersen) (talk • watchlist • email)
This in no way implies article ownership; all editors are encouraged to contribute.

1 Define Heroic
2 Little Round Top
3 Casualties
4 Possessive forms

[edit] Define Heroic

--198.254.16.201 13:27, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

See Wiktionary. Hal Jespersen 14:59, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Little Round Top

I have reverted the October 26 edits to this section. There is an entire article on Little Round Top and this section is deliberately short in deference to that. The place for speculation on the historic importance of the Union position needs to be discussed there, merged appropriately with military historians' views that do not comport with Oakes' self-interested judgments. (In my experience, very few serious military types believe that the loss of LRT would have been for long, and even if it had, the Army of the Potomac had a number of alternative defensive options they could have exercised.) Hal Jespersen 17:23, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Casualties

I have made some modifications to the casualty section in response to a recent edit. It is not possible to say in a Wikipedia article "some estimates are as high as..." We need to have those estimates cited. I do not happen to have references that show casualties as high as 20,000 in July 2. Part of the problem with the way this article was originally written was that it limited itself to actions on the Confederate right, so the figures from Pfanz addressed only those casualties. I added a reference from Trudeau for the entire day, but it is still only 16,800, not 20,000. Sears does not provide a full day's estimate. (These numbers are difficult because actions on Culp's Hill in particular occurred on both July 2 and July 3, and there are not reliable figures for the casualty breakdown in the units over those two days.) If someone has better references, let me know, but note that I am trying to use all published material for references, not random websites. I would also be interested to hear opinions about whether the comparison to Antietam makes a lot of sense considering that the second day casualty figures here are not dramatically larger than the first day's. Hal Jespersen (talk) 17:09, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Possessive forms

According to the Chicago Manual of Style, both styles of possessive forms are correct..but more sources pontificate for leaving the s off. See this for reference. Is there something else in Wikipedia that serves as a precedent? Cheers, ⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 23:57, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

If Wikipedia had a binding precedent, the MOS would mandate one style over another. The precedent in use here is that if two styles are considered correct, the original author of the text chooses one and others respect the choice. The other precedent is that the 300+ ACW articles I have written use this style (other than in the cases of unintentional errors). Hal Jespersen (talk) 00:18, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. I've probably been enjoying reading many of them. You are the first to raise objection. Guess I shouldn't have used that bot on all those articles...

Are you using breveted instead of brevetted in the articles that you write? That's one that I've been changing quite a bit. I've been looking at your style guidelines on your user page among other things and have learned a few things..thank you, I will be using some of it.

⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 02:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I have often (always?) used breveted because I suspect that brevetted (which should be pronounced breVETTED due to its double T, rather than BREVETed) is the British variant, similar to US traveler vs. UK traveller. However, a number of dictionaries I consulted had the 2T version listed first, so I have not pushed back on the changes. (I am really one of those old-fashioned guys who think dictionaries are prescriptive rather than descriptive and the order given is important.) Hal Jespersen (talk) 01:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)