The Rhetorical Effect of the Typo

[Suno_Regin]

Now that I've written a title for this post, I honestly don't know how much more I can say without spelling out the obvious. To the PlaneShift team, new players will not stay with this game when they see the kinds of typos that are present. Just a few minutes ago, I experienced a loading screen message that I'd never seen before, which asked for "artist, writers, (something else) can join us in making this world." It's jarring even when I quote it, because the way I quoted it is the exact same context in which it's used; the sentence is a run-on, and in context, it comes after a colon to break down the kinds of people the team is looking for.

This typo could be avoided by proofreading for 5 seconds. I know that nobody is being paid for this project, I've been here a long time, and not everybody is a native English speaker; however, I've taken some steps to learning German, and I would never let a sentence like that pass if I were writing in another language. The game's quests, NPC dialogues, character creation, and skill descriptions are riddled with typos such as the one I mentioned above. I would gladly volunteer to find each and every one of these and correct them myself if I can be guaranteed their removal. Unfortunately, for all the time I've been here, some of these have never changed, and new players can easily pick up on that upon a little research into the game's age. It may seem small, but in advertising a game, typos make or break the credibility of the developers. Can someone on the team look into these? If it's preferable that I make a bug report for each and every one of these that I come across, I will. They've lasted too long to be natural.

[bilbous]

I've submitted many of these types of bug reports, many have been fixed and /or improved. Language is not the only difficulty that need to be overcome here, there is also a tendency to see what you expect to see that affects every reader. I've seen it many times in professional publications and it is endemic to the process. You can go through the same text hundreds of times and still not be sure you have found them all. Bad auto-correct is another place these can creep in.

Most of these get corrected when someone posts them but it helps your cause if you explain how and why they are wrong and what you are suggesting is better. Sometimes the change is not made as you expect when you interpret the meaning in an unintended way.

If you see a lot of these on the tracker you could create a catchall report to link them all together and include new ones you submit. These reports get closed only when the last open link gets closed. This would serve to refresh the stale ones. Understand that it requires a dev with database access and those are few and far between.

[LigH]

Dear Suno ... by learning German, you may now start to understand why Germans are often called "Grammar Nazis"; (not all but) many of us seem to notice mistakes in foreign languages easier than the native speakers of these languages, and understand the simple rules better, possibly because we are already used to quite complicated grammar rules in our own language.

You will certainly find a lot more threads here regarding "a lot", "it(')s", "you(')r(e)", "could of", and other ... "slang", nicely said.

[Suno_Regin]

But commas inside the quotation marks, LigH

[Illysia]

But commas inside the quotation marks, LigH

No question mark Suno?

  For some reason, this thread gave me a good chuckle, and I could use that today.

[Rigwyn]

English grammar can be pretty tricky. In the case of the sentence below, there is no verb. The verb is implied.

No question mark Suno?

[Volki]

But commas inside the quotation marks, LigH

That's American English.

Rigwyn, English is not that tricky. The verb is not implied. It's conversational. It's even missing a comma. But no one cares. Conversational English is not subject to the same rules (except punctuation, obviously). If you try to speak in proper English you're gonna get slapped.

[Suno_Regin]

But commas inside the quotation marks, LigH

That's American English.

Interesting. I didn't know that was a distinction, as well.

Anyway, regardless of the supposed complexities of the language, a sentence like that earlier example, which is published on a loading screen, could certainly be corrected by taking just one extra second to read it. Most of these things could. So much effort goes into this project, but I'm surprised that a roleplaying game wouldn't set its focus on glaring grammatical and consistency errors.

[bilbous]

No! Question Mark Suno.
It doesn't need a comma and it does have a verb.
It isn't conversational, it is imperative.
The Oxford Comma is a real thing but is falling out of favor.

I believe it was Venalan who rewrote those TotD messages and he did call for submissions before he did it.

There comes a point where it is too much work for one person to find all the bad scripts, they certainly will not give out a text dump so the only way is to go in game and interact with the npc's. I got to the point where I only post them if I come across them and find them particularly glaring. Even then I do not always get around to it.

English is a particularly fractured language, it seems everywhere it is used has its own peculiarities, often depending on which other languages surrounding its users that can be borrowed from. A toque is a perfectly good Canadian English word that denotes a winter hat, borrowed from the French Canadians who may have gotten it from the natives.

[Volki]

Imperative requires a verb. I see no verb.

It is conversational because we are having a conversation right now. It's speech versus writing. You don't speak the same way you write a story.

Now I see you may have segued into another point to demonstrate how lack of punctuation can be confusing. Maybe you're being sarcastic. Or maybe you're being something else I'd rather not say since I don't want to be banned again.

[bilbous]

I was just suggesting a different interpretation again. The phrase "question authority" is complete with an action verb 'question'  and an object noun 'authority' being acted upon. You, yourself indicated the point I was amplifying when you called for a comma. In the original statement the implied verb is something along the lines of 'use,' though it is likely more than just a verb that is implied: 'do you want to use.'

Your second point about conversational versus writing is well enough taken although I will point out that vernacular is common when writing dialog.

Please do not think I am attacking you maliciously if I write the way that I  speak because much is lost in translation from the lack of emphasis in written words compared to speech patterns.

If you like you can have a field day parsing all the different interpretations of my words, I wont mind, just know that you cannot hear the inflections that modify the meaning in the text.

[Rigwyn]

I'll just drop this here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disputes_in_English_grammar

[bilbous]

* bilbous hands the link back and innocently inquires:

"Will this missing link cause your chain mail to fall apart?"

I like to think I know English pretty well, knowing no other languages, but I am most certainly not an expert in grammar. I used to annoy my friends when playing Scrabble because I was always making up words according to affix usage rules. I'd go in to the dictionary and point to the listing for -ous or pre- and such and they would never allow me to score any points. It made me mad.

[Rigwyn]

I'm just making the point that understanding English grammar is not all that straight forward. Regarding your link metaphor I agree, there comes a point where the returns on quibbling over tiny details diminishes.

[Venalan]

@Suno_Regin

I personally make a strong effort to fix every spelling and grammar mistake I come across or get told about. Any I am told about I change immediately (assuming it is a mistake), or when I can't I get someone who can to for me. There have been a number of players who have been outstanding with reporting these mistakes to me. But it takes time for these to get into the main server.

If you want to report these either make a bug report (there are no outstanding spelling/grammar reports that I know of) or just file a petition. In either case please give details of the mistake and a suggestion on how to improve it wont go amiss.