Rolling mods to Marc's new ranking prose. (Check in early, check in

Rolling mods to Marc's new ranking prose.  (Check in early, check in
often, to reduce conflicts if Adam is also working on this.  Actually,
if he is, and if my checking happens first, then there will still be
conflicts but I will have shifted them onto Adam, as whoever checks in
second has to resolve the problems.  So I should have said that this
checkin is in order to shift/reduce conflicts :-)