# Talk:Herbal

Just idle curiosity: here (the UK) the H at the beginning of Herbal is practically always pronounced as such, and so "a herbal" is the usual form. Indeed, my Oxford Reference Dictionary gives only this pronunciation. Do Americans pronounce the word as "Erbal"? Loganberry (Talk) 14:57, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

No, but Brazilians do 8-). Thanks... Jorge Stolfi 06:32, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
The H is usually silent in American English, though I think there's a few dialects that pronounce it.[1] —The preceding unsigned comment was added by NickelShoe (talk • contribs) 04:35, 23 December 2006 (UTC).

This may be unprecedented in Wikipedia (but all things were at some point), but I changed it to A[n] so as to compromise between the two pronunciations of "herbal" in text format that is at least used. To many people "a herbal" is a typo and will begin an edit war. While my solution may appear a bit messy, it is not unusual to see brackets [] in text and is the best solution in my opinion. I await the establishment to undo my revision and denounce me as a moron without giving a moment to think about the practicality of my solution.--Metallurgist (talk) 00:56, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, is that what's going on. I'd noticed the changes at Voynich manuscript, and was wondering what was going on, that people kept changing the "an" to "a". Maybe I'll check to see if the sentence can be recast, to avoid the problem. --Elonka 21:12, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

For those that watch this page I am flagging the fact that I have a rewrite of this article in progress. So that its appearance in a few days is not a complete shock, the work in progress can be viewed here. Please make suggestions on this page for additions, amendments etc. to the rewrite before it is put up in real time. Granitethighs 21:12, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Done - the rewrite has now beeen up for several weeks.Granitethighs 02:24, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Herbal/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Sasata (talk) 20:38, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
Greeting, I have signed up for this review. I'll make uncontroversial copyedits as I read it, and bring any other issues up here. Should have some comments up in a day or three. Sasata (talk) 20:38, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you Sasata for undertaking this review. I look forward to your comments.Granitethighs 22:14, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
Here's some starter comments. I plan to read again more thoroughly and checks the sources after you've had a chance to address these comments.

There's a few spots of prose that do not have an encyclopedic tone, or have peacock words, for example:
 Done "It is not surprising that"
 Done "but a magnificent illustrated Byzantine copy,"
 Done "of Brunfels contained the exquisite, botanically accurate"
 Done "It is with Fuchs that we reach the high water mark of the Renaissance herbal."
 Done "An engraving of Parkinson from his monumental work"
 Done "to his charming and original overlay"
 Done "We  have an illustrated herbal published in Mexico in 1552," who is we? This long sentence would benefit from splitting.
 Done "De Causis Plantarum (better known as the Enquiry into Plants) that established the scientific system of plants." what is meant by the scientific system of plants? The system of classification? Taxonomy?
 Done al-Dinawari -> is it convention to start sentences beginning with this name as lowercase?
 Done "Ibn al-'Awwam described 585 microbiological cultures (55 of which concern fruit trees)" I'm having difficulty imagining what kind of microbiological know-how they had in the 12th century. Any more details about this?
 Done "During this period Islamic science protected classical botanical knowledge that had been ignored in the West and Muslim pharmacy thrived." citation?
 Done "even though based on original observations and plant descriptions rather than questions than medicine" something wrong here
 Done incunabula?
 Done "were the treatises on simples" what's a simple?
 Done "…and the mysterious Serapion’s Liber De Simplici Medicina" you're leaving me hanging here… what was mysterious about it?
 Done Seems to have gone. the bare external link to www.1911encyclopedia.org should be placed in a proper web citation template, or at the least made more informative
 Done "Sixteenth century Netherlands was flourished." ?
 Done deleted "The descriptive accounts of regional floras by these three botanico-physicians formed the basis of the later botanical systems of Caesalpino, Bauhin and Linnaeus." source?
 Done "Spaniard Nicolas Monardes (1493–)" death year?
 Done "John Gerard (1545–1612) is the most famous of all the English herbalists." needs a page # in the citation
 Done "and we shall probably never know its full history." There's that "we" again
 Done thanks - a great little tool. sorry to be hopeless but I really dont know how to do this - could you help please? several bare links in the Nicholas Culpeper section needs formatting
Sure, I use this tool, set to "url", and paste in the web address (with "add url" and "add accessdate" options ticked). Then I manually added the date of publication, author name, and publisher, (had to go to the main home page to find this last bit) to get this result. Sasata (talk) 05:40, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
 Done "Included in the ranks of the more bizarre would be the Curious Herbal of Elizabeth Blackwell (1737)." what's bizarre about it?
 Done I might need a couple of days to revisit this section. three paragraphs in the "Legacy" section are completely uncited, and contain some sweeping generalizations that need to be attributed. (eg. "it is likely that alternative medical approaches like homeopathy, aromatherapy and other new age approaches to medicine find their origins in herbals and traditional medicine.")
Sasata, I have now been through the legacy section and tried to make it more appealing. It probably needs more citations. If you could please insert citation tags in the article where you think they are needed then I will make sure this is done. Thanks for your help - especially with formatting citations. Granitethighs 00:19, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
Sounds good, I'll read it again thoroughly in the next couple of days. Sasata (talk) 00:50, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
More comments: Sasata (talk) 04:59, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

there are some things in the lead not mentioned in the article body. For example:
 Not done Do I simply repeat it at the start of the history section - I'm not sure how to deal with this, does it need repeating? the word's derivation from Latin
 Done"Herbals were among the first literature produced in Ancient Egypt, China, India, and Europe. Their useful content and accessible format made them attractive to general readers" Is the opinion proposed in the second sentence covered somewhere in the article? I would have thought intuitively that in the early days of printing, only a select few even knew how to read, so I can't imagine who these "general readers" would be.
 Done"Age of Discovery" is mentioned in the lead, but not in the article
 Doneis there a page number for current ref 11 (source for the last sentence of the lead)? I don't think the reader should have to read the whole book to find the text that corroborates the statement.
 DoneAbout the Legacy section: please ensure that each paragraph has at least one citation. Also, in the 3rd paragraph, the citation occurs at the penultimate sentence of the paragraph, leaving the last sentence uncited.
Sorry about the delay, I tend to get distracted a lot :) About the Latin derivation, I would just move that sentence from the lead into the history section. Otherwise, I think the article meets GA criteria, so I am promoting it now. Sasata (talk) 02:15, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

GA review (see here for criteria)
It is reasonably well written.
a (prose):  b (MoS): 
Well written, complies with MoS.
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references):  b (citations to reliable sources):  c(OR): 
Well-cited to reliable sources; some facts verified against sources during review.
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects):  b (focused): 
Coverage seems broad but not too focused on any one aspect.
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias: 

It is stable.
No edit wars etc.: 

It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales):  b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Many images, all have appropriate PD or free-use licenses.
Overall:
Pass/Fail: 

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"Herbals have seen a modest revival in the western world since the last decades of the 20th century, as herbalism and related disciplines (such as homeopathy and aromatherapy) became popular forms of alternative medicine.[9]"
What does homeopathy have to do with this?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.73.79.175 (talk) 12:08, 19 November 2017 (UTC)