Talk:The Right Number

A fact from The Right Number appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 5 February 2017 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Scott McCloud's webcomic The Right Number requires readers to zoom in on each panel to view the next one?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2017/February. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Right Number.

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About one (-ish) sentence in the "Synopsis" section: "woman"/"girlfriend"/"wife","girl" ... intentional?... mistake?... beyond my grasp of English?...[edit]

Here's the sentence (plus the one that immediately follows it) as it currently stands:

The woman he meets looks, sounds, and acts significantly like his wife, however, and the protagonist finds that this girl is a "better version" of his girlfriend. He starts to experiment with his phone, and discovers a pattern where women with similar phone numbers have similar character traits.

I started to feel "tripped up" somewhere around two-thirds in, and read, and re-read....

"The woman he meets..." - so far, so good.

"...looks, sounds, and acts significantly like his wife, however,..." - ok, if the whole synopsis was was, "The woman he meets looks, sounds, and acts significantly like his wife". Interesting, but not quite a plot....

"... however, and the protagonist finds that this girl is..." - "girl"? She started out -- correctly, I hope..., as a "woman"....

"...a "better version" of his girlfriend." - I'm lost at this point. I'm guessing that the word "wife" should be replaced (typographically....) by the word "girlfriend". ...And here is where I start to wonder if there's a "special way" to read these kinds of plot summaries, and I'm not a member of the "initiated"..... (I read McCloud's comic book about Google Chrome, as well as "Understanding Comics", but that was over two decades ago.)

In the sentence that follows the above one:

"...women with similar phone numbers..." - Whew! We're back (correctly, I think) to the word "women". (The "whew!" applies only to the "the airplane has successfully passed through the turbulence. We apologize for having to hit all those air pockets." part. It does not, of course, apply to the main character, who, sadly, appears never to grasp the point that McCloud is quoted as saying in the referenced interview.)

I'm afraid to make any edits to this sentence, given that there may be something I'm truly missing. But, I'm sure there are "synopsis writers" out there who can either enlighten me, or properly revise the "turbulent" collection of words in the "The woman he meets..." sentence.

Best regards,

Obl obl, 2023-04-15 02:22 Sat

~~~~ User:Obl obl 06:26, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, Obl, that sentence was all messed up and confusing. Not sure how that happened, but thank you for pointing it out. I think it's a bit better now :) ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 08:42, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, what a clearly written revision! It's a paragraph whose precision structure I can use as as model for my own writing. ...However, I have to admit that I also learned quite a bit by trying to figure out the earlier version -- but this does not mean I'm looking forward to finding other examples of such "turbulent" writing. User:Obl obl 04:09, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]