Characters that irritate you/yours -

[Mr. Bones]

But consistent grammatical/spelling mistakes make you sound stupid, which makes me not want to talk to you. If it's once in a while, it's fine, but if it happens all the time, I honestly think less of you. And don't bother correcting it either way, because it interrupts the flow of RP and doesn't negate the original mistake.

Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and Alexander Graham Bell also were persons that couldn't spell. Would you have avoided talking to them or deemed them unintelligent? If so, you must have created/discovered some really useful things in your lifetime. Proper spelling is a good thing, but let's not be stuck up about it. I learned the whole, (People lose credibility if they make typographical errors.), thing while I was in college too. It was repeated probably 200 times throughout my English textbook like some kind of doctrine. It only causes people to lose credibility from those who are rash to jump to conclusions.

[CrashBlizz]

Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and Alexander Graham Bell might have been fairly clever people who couldn't spell.... but they never wanted to be good RPers in Cantr. In a solely text/language based game it is most helpful if the players can use text/language properly.

[masterekat]

And people complain about the shortage of players. I'd rather play with bad rp'ers (i.e. people who are new to Cantr and could eventually end up being good players if they aren't chased off) and bad spellers than have utter silence in town. People in real life have different levels of intelligence as do characters in Cantr. Just roll with it.

[The_Pagan]

The avoiding people for bad spelling thing happens irl. I have a speech problem in real life and I do find it puts people off talking to me.

I had a friend who I knew at school because his friends and my friends hung out and I didn't really know him, but we got to be good friends online. When we meet face-to-face for the first time in years, it freaked him out and he avoided me even online for a few months. We're back in touch again so happy endding thre but it does happen.

Also I find it ruins jokes irl too. People find me funny online, in notes or by text more than they do when hearing my voice. Even my brother who knows exactly what I am saying as he put up with it his whole life told me that i'm 'funny as an astract voice'. So speech problems do have the same qualities of bad spelling etc ruining the fun of the game.

I'm not supporting being annoyed by these things, I'm just saying it's part of the real world too. My friend from the first story went in to a massive guilt trip and I was more concerned about that than him avoiding me or whatever.


But back on topic-

I'm annoyed by ooc whispers/notes. If ooc MUST happen, let everyone see as otherwise they are seeing people whispering or passing note who aren't.

I am annoyed by correcting typos i the next line with an *, even though it's obvious what you mean.

[Armulus Satchula]

I am annoyed by correcting typos i the next line with an *, even though it's obvious what you mean.

You're going to be annoyed for the rest of your life because this is typography thing called a footnote and it has been used for a long time. Though with Cantr I guess it would be a "headnote" because the text in Cantr is opposite of how a book would read.

[Marian]

And people complain about the shortage of players. I'd rather play with bad rp'ers (i.e. people who are new to Cantr and could eventually end up being good players if they aren't chased off) and bad spellers than have utter silence in town. People in real life have different levels of intelligence as do characters in Cantr. Just roll with it.

I put effort into my RPing characters. It annoys me when other people don't, even though clearly they've got much, much more time to sit in front of the computer than I do. It breaks the immersion just as much as constant OOC to have to run everything somebody posts through a mental filter and read it several times just to try and understand what the hell they're saying as they spam the events page with inane garbage. (Really though, thanks for lighting up my character with 'im bored' and *sighs wit hbordom*, at least they don't induce headaches nearly as badly as multiple lines of gibberish) At some point I just start skimming their posts and having my character ignore them whenever possible, and that usually works out fine since I've pretty much never seem a single char of this kind with any sort of depth or drive to do anything interesting...though I guess it's not surprising that people who are lazy in one aspect of RP are lazy in all the others too.

[phoenixannwn]

You were asleep. I tied you up.

Actually I think this would probably irritate me. 'Asleep' just means logged off, and it doesn't change anything about the general RP rule to not assume things about other people's chars in your emotes. IMO it would be better to emote just starting or trying to tie them up, or approaching them with a rope and the obvious intention, and let them take it from there...anything else is kind of poor form, or at least would be considered it anywhere else I've RPed.

There are some people who RP going to sleep when they log off. I am one of these. I'm going to accept the fact that you are not responding to me in any way as evidence, that, yeah, you're full asleep now (blank says: *yawns* I'm tired. I think I'll take a nap) because otherwise what you get is weird super-mutants who never sleep and continually work, even if it's sometimes silent and unmoving and they don't respond to anything. So, really?
It pisses me off even more, when, you *are* in a compromising position you don't see a way out of, and instead of being a good sport about it you...sleep. >.< Or pretend to be asleep, whatever. And just refuse to wake up.
Edit: And Marian, I completely agree with you in the above post about grammatical errors and whatnot. Okay, yeah, Edison and Einstein couldn't spell--but they were also not writers. Reading Cantr is like reading a book, or an interactive play--how would you feel if, in the middle of Macbeth, or Jane Eyre, someone goes "*sighs* Gah I'm so boerd!
*bored"
The thing for me is about immersion--which is why I hate OOC stuff, 'cause it breaks that 4th wall and reminds me that, hey! This isn't real! It's like a glaring neon sign with bad spelling.

[The_Pagan]

I am annoyed by correcting typos i the next line with an *, even though it's obvious what you mean.

You're going to be annoyed for the rest of your life because this is typography thing called a footnote and it has been used for a long time. Though with Cantr I guess it would be a "headnote" because the text in Cantr is opposite of how a book would read.

Footnotes are used to give additional info in books and graphic novels. You don't see the wrong spelling in the text and then the correction in the footnote. I like footnotes, real footnotes.

Personally for me, it is annoying because it pulls me out of the 'story' needlessly because some is too precious about their spelling.
Though it even more annoying when it's another player doing the correcting, as I seen on other sites.

[curious]

I have personally seen some very good rp in response to my own typos (which are more common when my character is somewhat pressured by a 'real time' component) and t usually entails them just commenting on not being able to understand what I just said... or something similar.
Unfortunately.. this loses thunder when their response is also riddles with typos too.

I do use OOC to correct, and especially if I type a name incorrectly, as I think that's just rude. I read through them as if they are not written at all, unless I have difficulty in 'getting' the line immediately before the OOC comment.

I use it less these days, as I think I am just more prepared now to read what I have written in the box before i hit return.

If it irritates you? Pity for your hump... get over it. To my mind, it has its good uses. I am no grammatical purist... nor do I need to be in order to imagine a world, which, for me, is still about presence and context.

[Marian]

To respond a little to what The Pagan said, I don't see avoiding terrible RPers in Cantr to be the same at all as being a jerk to people with speech problems in real life. Or at least I would hope no doctor has ever told you you have difficulty there just because you're lazy, which is the root of the problem in game. I mean, I get that some people are better typers/spellers than others, but in a slow-paced game like Cantr there's just no excuse. I've been called a good writer, but if I try to type fast there are typos all over the place, run-on sentences and commas everywhere, and I constantly mix up their/they're/there/then/than/your/you're and have words that are just flat out missing. The main different between me and the people we're complaining about are that I take a couple of seconds to glance over my posts and fix things before I click submit, and take notice of all those words underlined in red...it's not like there's a minute limit anymore, people! You can do this too, it's not hard, it doesn't take any special skills!

There are some people who RP going to sleep when they log off. I am one of these. I'm going to accept the fact that you are not responding to me in any way as evidence, that, yeah, you're full asleep now (blank says: *yawns* I'm tired. I think I'll take a nap) because otherwise what you get is weird super-mutants who never sleep and continually work, even if it's sometimes silent and unmoving and they don't respond to anything. So, really?
It pisses me off even more, when, you *are* in a compromising position you don't see a way out of, and instead of being a good sport about it you...sleep. >.< Or pretend to be asleep, whatever. And just refuse to wake up.

Uh...they're not 'refusing to wake up' though, they're just not in front of their computer. Surely you can't get pissed off at people for not living in front of their computer? "I need to sleep for a bit now..." or *yawns and dozes off* is just a polite shorthand for 'Sorry for going quiet in the middle of this conversation/important event, but I need to log off now.' Though messages like that can get annoying themselves if they're overdone, and it seems to me like they didn't used to be as common except maybe in urgent situations...it's always been an accepted fact that Cantrians all suffer from narcolepsy, I wish people would just roll with it.

Though the thing is, Cantrians really are weird supermutants. Unless you also stop working on projects and pretend you didn't notice anything that happened while you were logged off. (Though now that I think of it that might actually be an interesting way to play a character...just not a very effective one.)

[mojomuppet]

You were asleep. I tied you up.

Actually I think this would probably irritate me. 'Asleep' just means logged off, and it doesn't change anything about the general RP rule to not assume things about other people's chars in your emotes. IMO it would be better to emote just starting or trying to tie them up, or approaching them with a rope and the obvious intention, and let them take it from there...anything else is kind of poor form, or at least would be considered it anywhere else I've RPed.

There are some people who RP going to sleep when they log off. I am one of these. I'm going to accept the fact that you are not responding to me in any way as evidence, that, yeah, you're full asleep now (blank says: *yawns* I'm tired. I think I'll take a nap) because otherwise what you get is weird super-mutants who never sleep and continually work, even if it's sometimes silent and unmoving and they don't respond to anything. So, really?
It pisses me off even more, when, you *are* in a compromising position you don't see a way out of, and instead of being a good sport about it you...sleep. >.< Or pretend to be asleep, whatever. And just refuse to wake up.
Edit: And Marian, I completely agree with you in the above post about grammatical errors and whatnot. Okay, yeah, Edison and Einstein couldn't spell--but they were also not writers. Reading Cantr is like reading a book, or an interactive play--how would you feel if, in the middle of Macbeth, or Jane Eyre, someone goes "*sighs* Gah I'm so boerd!
*bored"
The thing for me is about immersion--which is why I hate OOC stuff, 'cause it breaks that 4th wall and reminds me that, hey! This isn't real! It's like a glaring neon sign with bad spelling.

You should take up playing with yourself, I think you would be happier, take that anyway you want.

I have seen, including my own style, massive improvements in the way people play the game over time. Be thankful that people want to play the game and if theyrunthier words together, spel badely, *EMOTE IN CAPS*, or anything else you dislike, eventually they will see that others don't do it and correct themselves. Or they will quit because its clear their imperfections annoy you so much that you would rather...again play with yourself.

Hey these people aren't out slumming it in the streets and are attempting to entertain you. They could be doing much worse things than confusing to, two and too. Like I dont know, robbing houses, drinking and driving, molesting, dog fighting, sacrificing animals to some strange god.....Hmmm I smell role play right there. Go with it.

[Marian]

I have seen, including my own style, massive improvements in the way people play the game over time. Be thankful that people want to play the game and if theyrunthier words together, spel badely, *EMOTE IN CAPS*, or anything else you dislike, eventually they will see that others don't do it and correct themselves. Or they will quit because its clear their imperfections annoy you so much that you would rather...again play with yourself.

IIRC you were just as eager as the rest of us to ship Angel off.

e: VVV It's usually pretty easy to tell when that's the case, and it's definitely not what I've been (endlessly) complaining about here. Besides, it seems a general rule over the entirety of the internet that posts of non-native speakers are usually much less likely to be eye-bleedingly idiotic than native ones, probably because they have to actually think about what they're writing.

[SumBum]

One of my own chars irritates me to the point that I get headaches sometimes. My apologies to anyone who has had the misfortune of encountering that one.

Another thought for the spelling/grammar issue: bear in mind that a lot of players are not native English speakers.

[mojomuppet]

I have seen, including my own style, massive improvements in the way people play the game over time. Be thankful that people want to play the game and if theyrunthier words together, spel badely, *EMOTE IN CAPS*, or anything else you dislike, eventually they will see that others don't do it and correct themselves. Or they will quit because its clear their imperfections annoy you so much that you would rather...again play with yourself.

IIRC you were just as eager as the rest of us to ship Angel off.

I did make an attempt to help her, as did the rest.

[Missy]

I have my own comments for this spelling thing and it's not a new thought from me. This irritation from others that is so commonly voiced is not something new either. But bitching about it doesn't make grammatical errors and poor spelling habits go away.


Just a few points that I think some of you who are so irritated by this are missing

1.) You are sure it's just laziness but I'm not. These typing errors, grammar errors, netspeak things are common practice in many places. It's a habit form people pick up and it's hard to ditch. I was talking to another cantr player that I talk to on Secondlife last night about this topic and how it pissed me off. I mentioned that the other day I nearly typed "lol" in cantr! He said he nearly made the mistake of typing /me! (For those that don't know /me is a way to get action in certain sorts of chats/other games on the net.) But if it's so easy for us to get used to type these things in SL and so when we think "Laugh" it's automatic our fingers do the lol. When we think action sometimes it's automatic that our fingers just go to /me.

Spelling poorly and without proper punctuation and proper grammar is ALSO habit forming. I have met some writers who I am in awe of, but on yahoo messenger they don't use their shift key for shit. So I can easily imagine how easy it is to forget that you have not used it while you're typing up something for Cantr.

2,)No one here is saying they don't understand your irritation with reading through muddled paragraphs and sentences IC. It's a daunting task and I digress, I too have to say to myself "I'm better than not taking this person seriously because they didn't use their shift key." Everyone starts somewhere. I've been at roleplaying online since I was in 8th grade, having started at www.the-park.com from something as simple as typing "*throws a pie* and thinking that was absolutely great at that time, and we never used proper spelling and grammar but we enjoyed what we were doing in there. Then I graduated to Yahoo chat and it was there that there was a mix of one-liners who seemed to be having the same sort of fun that I had in the park, but there were also people like Slowness Incarnate who had these massive posts of glorious beauty, full of incredibly large words, proper punctuation and grammar and they knew where their shift key was. (Hey guess what? I always knew where mine was because I had taken a typing course. I just never understood the importance of it until that moment.) I thought this style could be mine. I could create masterpieces like she did. So I started to become consciously aware of what I was typing while I was roleplaying without anyone telling me that I irritated them. I can accredit her to what I have become over the years. And still there are people here in Cantr who don't like my style. But there are some who say they have never met anybody who writes like I write and that I am the reason they have enjoyed Cantr so much. It is one thing to inspire people through your intelligent style of writing, but it's another to think that beheading them in this thread is going to solve much anything other than make them say "i don't care what you think. i play this game to have fun and you're just stuck up." Because that's the mindset that the majority of people new to roleplaying will take when confronted about their style.

3,) It is also true that you might think you know what this game is to be about and what it isn't and it might be a peeve of yours that some people don't use proper spelling and grammar while playing it, but having been on staff I'm going to tell you that although even some people on staff are annoyed by these errors, laziness, general non knowledge about proper form---Those who don't use it are always welcome to play this game. So saying things like "That's what proper for rp" doesn't stand. It's been recognized officially in a non official way that even though this sort of thing irritates some people, it does not mean those who don't use their shift key are incapable of bringing something to the table for cantr. I can tell you that some of the towns you're standing in wouldn't be where they are if it weren't for some of the most atrocious spellers and typists there are. I think back and I think of Jerry who who wrote pretty cool poetry and had it posted on Zulu.com or something like that--But did you know he played stabber stan, one of the creators of the Siom government? Stabber Stan seldom used capital letters while rp'ing whether he realized it or not, but I did. lol Then I think back to Ladvicitivoi and I think of Emperor Alexi Romanov (I think I have that name right.) Sorry to tell you but he did not always use proper spelling, punctuation or grammar. We all know the Blackrocks and Brandon--He did not always use the greatest forms of grammar either (he also rp'ed in Yahoo with Slowness and I, and he never ever used capitlization in yahoo.) What a game is to you, and to have fun while doing it might be being perfect in your writing skills. But what a game is and what is fun about it for others is not always being perfect. Even in a roleplaying game. Understand that. Then also understand that some people are reading your proper grammar and spelling and typing and saying to themselves right at this very moment, "I wish I could write like that," and are probably formulating what it is to be great like you, as we speak. Imagine if they had only known your posts here though, that you are so willing to shun them even though somewhere in their mind they might like to try and write like you, and now they see what you really think of them. How encouraging! Not!

It's one thing to say these things annoy you but every time this comes up on this forum I can't help but feel like you're all a big lynch mob, and especially in this topic.

Fact is, the player I spoke to last night? I asked him, "What would you do if you accidently typed /me in cantr and people took you less seriously for it?" He said, "Take them less seriously." So think about that.