Just discovered a neat trick for extracting factual-ish, neutral-ish information from text.
Please rewrite this passage in the style of Wikipedia
Applying it to The strata of Portsmouth via my Flat Affect GPT gives me:
The suburbs surrounding Portsmouth, England, illustrate the gradual urban expansion from the city center, characterized by the development of infrastructure, including pavements and tramway lines extending three miles to Portsmouth. The area is marked by bridges over saline channels, suggestive of the nearby ocean, and encircled by a series of forts on Portsea Island, featuring masonry, earthworks, and steel fortifications that serve as historical military defenses. Notable structures within this belt include arches housing Royal Engineers’ stores adorned with the “18 VR 61” emblem and obsolete cannons.
Significant landmarks include Hilsea Barracks, the adjacent post office, and an obelisk at the “Green Posts” Inn, denoting the eighteenth-century boundaries of Portsmouth with the inscription “Burgi de Portesmuth Limes MDCCXCIX [1799].” The passage through North End to Landport traverses evolving residential areas, initially with unfinished red-bricked suburbs, followed by settlements from the 1860s and 1870s in brown brick and grey stucco, and earlier areas dating from 1840 to 1860 mimicking Italian villas but now deteriorating.
These suburbs reflect the social ascent of Victorian entrepreneurs, criticized by Thomas Babington Macaulay for their ostentatious lifestyle, comparing it unfavorably to Roman prosperity. Subsequent to this development were the Regency period houses, identifiable by their pseudo-classic design, bay windows, and stone steps, which are now gradually giving way to commercial premises.
Transitioning into Landport reveals a blend of residential and commercial spaces, with a notable preference for the term “roads” over “streets” by developers, aiming to attract a more affluent clientele. This area serves as a bridge to Portsmouth’s historical center, once protected by military fortifications now replaced by public parks, barracks, and hospitals, showcasing the city’s modernization. Portsmouth’s architectural evolution is capped by the Town Hall, a significant structure criticized for its derivative design from Bolton’s Town Hall, reflecting a blend of Classic and Renaissance styles without fully committing to either.
Note that it (successfully, in this case) expanded “Macaulay” into “Thomas Babington Macaulay”, but failed to understand the sense of the reference to Macaulay ‘to whom the sight of a row of “semi-detached suburban residences” gave visions of progress and prosperity that seem to us inexpressibly vulgar’.
You still have to watch it carefully, and verify it against the original text.