Do you think whoever flagged it really meant it just needs to be cited better, or is there something I'm not seeing?
Thanks, Alexa
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I think they used the wrong template ... {{story}} would be more appropriate for prose like this:
“Mrs. Kealy, however, seemed to think that by bringing her over, they were getting an unpaid servant.”
“After war officially broke out, about a month later, Mrs. Kealy pointed out that she didn't even know if her parents were even alive anymore.”
The first one uses “however”, which we used to counsel people to avoid (at, what else [[WP:AVOID]]). The second uses a contraction in something that is neither a possessive nor quoted matter.
While the text isn’t too problematic to me, it does need to be made drier and more encyclopedic. I would rewrite the first sentence as “Mrs. Kealy believed she would work for the family as a household servant” (There also needs to be a footnote after that graf). The rest I leave to you to edit, although if you want help do feel free to ask.
(Years ago, in my early days, I made a similar mistake of writing prose that was a bit too novelistic: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_Coke&oldid=18530528, (see the History section) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:New_Coke#Reads_too_much_like_prose).
Daniel Case