Talk:Moby-Dick

Sutile detail.

`Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous.´ Well, the reality is...isn't so famous in non english speaking places. (or directly unknown, neither in their translations) It's kinda a bit english-centric. Yeah, ik this is english wikipedia. Perhaps i also could say "En un lugar de la Mancha" is one of the most famous opening sentences too but...u know what i mean. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.54.251.119 (talk) 17:48, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

That is indeed something to watch out for. I live in a non-English speaking country (The Netherlands), and the opening sentence is quite famous here. The brevity of the sentence makes it easy to remember, in the original or in translations, so I think we need not delete this statement unless more editors object.MackyBeth (talk) 02:09, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Agree (once again!) with MackyBeth. As we discussed once before on this Talk Page, the article does not claim that the sentence is "the" most famous, only "one of the...." ch (talk) 02:47, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Hello, CWH! It's fun to 'meet' you after such a hiatus. And a belated thanks for restoring the Gale book to the Works Cited list. MackyBeth (talk) 02:52, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Not only is it famous, it directly contradicts the opening line of the lead. It doesn't say that the narrator's name is Ishmael, and in fact, strongly implies that it isn't. JDZeff (talk) 16:55, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

How does it "strongly" suggest his name isn't Ishmael? Eeclwa (talk) 22:51, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Edit correction

"the white whale that, on the ship's previous voyage, bit off Ahab's leg at the knee"

If you know grammar, you know that a nonrestrictive clause requires commas to offset it. Nonrestrictive clauses offer extra information about something you have mentioned in a sentence, but that information isn’t essential for identifying the thing you’re talking about. In the sentence above, "on the ship's previous voyage" is not necessary to the sentence. Only one whale bit off Ahab's leg, and it only happened once. There is no other whale to confuse it with. You're right, though, that the sentence is incorrect. It should say, "the white whale WHICH (or who), on the ship's previous voyage, bit off Ahab's leg at the knee". We know this also because "on the ship's previous voyage" can be moved to the end of the sentence and it means the same thing and still makes sense. Either way, it still needs to be separated by commas, because it is a nonrestrictive clause. Eeclwa (talk) 22:21, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Clarification:

If you moved the clause to the end, no commas would be needed, and you could use "that". Eeclwa (talk) 22:26, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Modifying footnotes to improve correspondence to general references

I've been benefiting greatly from the citations in this beautiful article, but have encountered some friction in how footnotes are mapped to the documents in the general reference section. I'd like to know what y'all would think of employing a system like shortened footnotes. One virtue, aside from linking footnotes more directly to full references/corresponding resources, is that shortened footnotes seem to afford a lot of flexibility through explanatory notes for e.g. clarification regarding provenance of italics.

I also apologize if this has already been deliberated on before, as I didn't find the topic when I searched the archives. – Spida-tarbell (talk) 06:02, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 May 2023

It is not Ahab who is possessed by all the world's angels, it is the whale; also the line is "Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven"

Change

"Possessed by all the fallen angels", Ahab plants his harpoon in the whale's flank.

to

The whale, "possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven," crests above the water, and Ahab plants his harpoon in its flank. Fewredthings (talk) 14:58, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Possible NPOV issues if you're interpreting it differently. Callmemirela 🍁 03:56, 16 May 2023 (UTC)