Posted on: Sun, 12/12/2010 - 6:57pm
Basic Guidelines(?)
  • Alrighty, looking over the forums, I've seen some pretty cool stuff. There's a lot of creativity and some really cool ideas. However, one thing I've also noticed is...basic grammar. I don't mean to come off as a jerk, or uptight, but really? I don't think anyone here is stupid, or trying to be, but it's quite hard to read anything when you've got run-on sentences with no punctuation and horrendous spelling. On that note, the comment-posting system on this site comes with a spell-check, at least for me. When a word is underlined in red, that means it's spelled wrong. If it's not underlined, make sure you check anyways-it's not always correct.
  • For example: "I went to the market." and "I bought too many potatoes at the market." Both of these phrases use the same phonetic, "To" and "Too". That means they sound the same. However, they have different meanings, and different uses therein. "To" is when you're referring to something moving or going somewhere, or in a certain direction. Ex: "His eyes moved to hers.", "They moved to the right-hand lane." Whereas "Too" is used for just about everything else. "I had too much to eat.", "You too?", "I have to do that too." You get the general idea. Basically: Watch how you spell, and how you use what you spell.
  • Next, punctuation. This is probably my biggest pet peeve. Just look at this: "I went to the market and I bought too many potatoes and then I ate too many potatoes because I didn't want to waste them at dinner and I'm really really full." It's horrible. It runs on. Sorry if I'm being over dramatic, but when you're role playing, or just reading in general, and all you see is "And" on the page, it's a bit of a turn off, per se. What looks (and reads) much better is this: "I went to the market to shop for dinner, and I bought too many potatoes. I didn't want to waste them though, so I ate them all, and now I'm really, really full." You see? So much better. If you want, you can even add in some "filler" words, things that emphasize your phrase in the places you want. "I went to the market today to shop for dinner tonight, but I ended up buying way too many potatoes. However, I hate wasting food, so I cooked them all, and ate a lot of it. Now, I'm really, really full!" 
  • Hope this helps everyone on the site at creating smoother, better posts, for those of us who appreciate it. Also, sorry for being such a grammar-nazi, but I thought this was needed. Thanks for your understanding. :)
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