The tricky subject of Rp and Spelling

[Faye]

16 minutes ago, Kaiverta said:

...or don't have a good report with OOCly, then I more than likely won't say anything. If it's a friend, I'll point it out...

The word you are looking for is "rapport." :'D And that's not pointing out the other at least one error in the post. I say this not to be a dick, but as an example (even if now at the risk of being hypocritical) of why I find correcting other people's posts and spelling/grammar therein to be rather silly. Everyone makes mistakes. I see very few people make the majority of their posts without errors, however tiny and nit-picky they may be, and that's not excluding people in this thread very thread perhaps ironically talking about being "grammar-nazis" and supporting the idea of correcting others. Last evening, I even stumbled upon some of the OP's RP in the Quicksand, complete with many sentence fragments, "try and" used repeatedly instead of "try to," and multiple infrequent punctuation errors. But all these posts and the OP's RP last night, no doubt much like the infamous your/you're confusion, have been perfectly easy to understand and read; many people would not even notice the errors. Which brings me to the question: When does correcting someone's grammar mistakes become asinine and pedantic? Where is that line drawn and who has decided it? Why not just leave it alone altogether? 

Edited February 28, 2018 by Faye

[Kaiverta]

5 minutes ago, Faye said:

The word you are looking for is "rapport." :'D And that's not pointing out the other at least one error in the post. I say this not to be a dick, but as an example (even if now at the risk of being hypocritical) of why I find correcting other people's posts and spelling/grammar therein to be rather silly. Everyone makes mistakes. I see very few people make the majority of their posts without errors, however tiny and nit-picky they may be, and that's not excluding people in this thread very thread perhaps ironically talking about being "grammar-nazis" and supporting the idea of correcting others. Last evening, I even stumbled upon some of the OP's RP in the Quicksand, complete with many sentence fragments, "try and" used repeatedly instead of "try to," and multiple infrequent punctuation errors. But all these posts and the OP's RP last night, no doubt much like the infamous your/you're confusion, have been perfectly easy to understand and read; many people would not even notice the errors. Which brings me to the question: When does correcting someone's grammar mistakes become asinine and pedantic? Where is that line drawn and who has decided it? Why not just leave it alone altogether? 

 

Yeah, I knew it was 'rapport'.  Silly me. And yes, there are other mistakes. xP It doesn't bother me, though, because I'm just 'chatting'. Like some people using 'u' instead of 'you' (though I don't l33t-speak). I'm a 'grammar-nazi' with the basics. This in no way means that I know everything. There are some quantifying/qualifying? words (such as 'noun', 'pronoun') that I don't know the name of - and might not know what they refer to (to what they refer, blabla) if I heard the word (collective term?  ), because it's all stuff I learned in primary school. I have subsequently forgotten most of the non-basic (noun, pronoun, etc) terms, though I do accurately use the words or phrases that those terms describe.

 

Correcting 'your' if you're saying 'you are' is not a pedantic thing, though. For instance, if you were to use that in an essay, or a resume (don't know how to make the little 'e' accent on the keyboard, so sue me), it would be a mark against you because it's incorrect. Especially in essays, teachers look for people who know how to communicate things in the officially correct way. So in that sense, a little assistance in-game can help the person be more successful irl. If the person doesn't want assistance, that person will have no problem saying so and everyone helping him/her should respect that.

[Menord]

It's important to consider what kind of person is making the mistakes and how they are likely to react if you correct them.

 

I spent over a decade in school and university studying English, but I still sometimes make mistakes because prepositions are my bane and I tend to mix American English and British English words together, sometimes to the confusion of the people roleplaying with me. I'd wager that few people write badly out of laziness; dyslexia, lacking language skills, tiredness and so forth are more likely explanations.

 

I can understand the annoyance rising from repeated spelling mistakes - been there, done that - but sometimes it can be a sore point for people. I have a friend whose first attempt at roleplaying almost ended up being his last one because someone in our group started correcting his spelling/grammar mistakes. I try to lead by example and write as well as I can: I would ask for clarifications if I didn't understand the other person was saying, but I'd otherwise be careful about correcting others unless I was completely sure that that the person didn't mind advice/criticism. Roleplay should be a fun hobby, after all, and if someone starts constantly worrying about their spelling or grammar, RP tends to stop being fun for them.

[Koro Dotharl]

When I first started RPing my english was barely beyond school level. Could barely spell to save my life and I had this one accident where I thought 'punching' and 'fisting' had the same meaning. That was uhm awkward to say the least.

 

Yet I was lucky enough to be in a group of patient people that were decent enough to correct my mistakes politely without ever making me feel unwelcome or patronized. Slowly over time they helped me improve my english and my RP in turn. Now, I am not saying that I'm as good as a native and I still slip-up but I am certainly a lot better than others. All thanks to people that did not think of themselves as superior to others.

 

The english I developed through RP also allowed me to consider living abroad.

 

So yeah learn from your mistakes and improve. Eventually you'll be better than the elitists themselves.

[Baja]

As long as I can understand what another player means, it doesn't bother me at all. If it did, I suppose I would have to decide between embarassing someone with a comment about it or finding someone else with better grammar to RP with.

[Valence]

I'm of two minds on the issue. And I want to clarify that I will never go my way to harass anyone with spelling mistakes. We all do them. The question starts to get subjective where we put the bar exactly and what we consider to be the limit. I don't care at all with occasional mistakes, because even professional writers make them. Having like 5 mistakes per sentence or paragraph every single time, though... well it's repelling to me. Guess it's highly personal and subject to personal limits.

 

So, one I'm biased obviously because I will never hold a foreigner that is barely fluent in english to the same standards as a native.

 

Two, I think either the school system is failing, or whatever the reason is, but grammar is getting more and more butchered over the years in all countries I know, english natives or my own. Especially my own. And I think that being lenient with it is doing a disservice to address the issue. 

[Dravus]

If somebody didn't like my writing style or found it to be jarring, I'd prefer that they told me outright. I've had bad experiences in the past where people strung me along, pretending to be engaged and interested in my long term character plots only for me to waste hours and hours of my time investing in them only to find out they were lying. It led to me taking a break from role-play altogether and I only recently plucked up the courage to return. I don't think people should go around with a smug attitude looking down on how other people role-play but at the same time I don't think the approach where any and all feedback is considered 'bad' is healthy either.

 

Many role-players simply aren't going to click with one another. We all have our preferences. We all have our pet peeves. I can't stand interacting with characters that speak like modern day American teenagers, for instance. I find it incredibly immersion breaking - and whilst I wouldn't bash people for doing it, I'm not going to bend over backwards to stick around and interact with those characters on a long term basis. I'll also outright excuse myself from the presence of anybody taking extreme liberties with the game's established lore, simply because I don't care to interact with someone's take on the 'Warrior of Light' or a canon NPC.

 

FFXIV has people coming to it from all sorts of different backgrounds, both in terms of role-play experience and real life cultural elements. European role-players, in particular, often get branded 'frigid' or 'blunt' for the way that they post on a forum or in a chat channel. I've had it happen to me more times than I care to count, but I'm not changing my posting style as a result because the people I care most about interacting with are absolutely fine with it and they see the more casual side of me when I befriend them.

 

There's countless role-players on Balmung. I feel like things would be a lot better for everybody if more people were just open and honest with each other. It's absolutely fine to find frequent spelling errors to be jarring, so long as you're not mean about it. You don't necessarily need to grit your teeth and never, ever speak up about it for fear of 'offending' someone.

 

You just need to be prepared for a potential overreaction or cold reception if you do offer constructive feedback. It's no different to the sort of reactions you may find in the PvE or PvP side of the game. I've seen people rage in Rival Wings in response to someone speaking up at the start and suggesting that the 'every1 go mid' strategy is flawed and not nearly as effective as it used to be after the latest round of balance changes. I've seen people flip in response to a gentle reminder to use their cooldowns during large pulls in a dungeon so that the healer isn't strained more than they need to be.

 

Nobody is obligated to take advice given them to heart. Yet at the same time, I don't feel as though everybody needs to keep their mouth shut either. All feedback should be constructive - and so long as it is constructive, there shouldn't be much of an issue. The person receiving it can either take it on board, or they can carry on as they were. Meanwhile, the person who offered the feedback in question can either politely excuse themselves or make their peace with the situation and continue as they were.

 

Now, personally, I'd be happy to overlook someone's errors if I could understand what they were saying and their character intrigued me. I've never met a role-player who didn't have teething problems. Everybody makes errors from time to time, myself included. 

Edited March 1, 2018 by Ryuji

[Aaron]

I prefer grammatically correct RPers tbh. Nothing wrong with mistakes from people who's not first speaking English users but unless your character legitimately has struggles speaking Eorzean (Like my alt) then choppy sentences, no punctuation and wrong constant uses of stuff like there, their & they're is a turn away.

 

Nothing wrong with being pushed away from it just don't be a fuck about it either.

[Branson Thorne]

Honestly, as long as I can read and understand the point they are trying to get across, I really couldn't care less about it.

 

I've even willingly roleplayed with another who would write like this: "He hurryed and rdrunk the tee from his cup befor sitting it down on the table an standing too go wuld wave bye" And the reason why is simple. I can understand it.

 

From an IC perspective, my character is not reading his actions, she is watching them. Therefore, as long as I can have a clear picture of what the character is doing or saying in my head, I'm chill with it.

 

Edited March 1, 2018 by SicketySix

[Icoco-Ico]

We had a talk and it all worked out. It has been really interesting to see everyone's thoughts on the matter. I advocate communication and honesty with your rp buddies~!

[Tregarde]

On 3/1/2018 at 6:25 PM, Icoco-Ico said:

We had a talk and it all worked out. It has been really interesting to see everyone's thoughts on the matter. I advocate communication and honesty with your rp buddies~!

Glad it worked out.

 

My personal feelings on the matter - I do very much prefer to see people use proper spelling and grammar, and it can be really irksome to see someone constantly using 'your' (or even 'ur' ~shudder~) instead of 'you're', not using capitol letters, etc...  BUT, I also realize that a lot of people grew up where typing like that was normal (especially when Twitter appeared and suddenly people were forced to contract words to make them fit in a tweet). I also know that a lot of people are not native to English. Some may be new to RP and used to run around with groups that didn't care about spelling and grammar.

 

So I just deal with it. What is more important to me is if I understand what the other person is trying to communicate. I've seen people's typing improve over time, just from being exposed to people who type more 'properly' (for lack of a better phrase).  Some people just need to be given a chance, and a little time and patience.

[Aegir]

47 minutes ago, Tregarde said:

Glad it worked out.

 

My personal feelings on the matter - I do very much prefer to see people use proper spelling and grammar, and it can be really irksome to see someone constantly using 'your' (or even 'ur' ~shudder~) instead of 'you're', not using capitol letters, etc... 

 

It's.... it's... capital letters. 

[Tregarde]

9 hours ago, Aegir said:

 

It's.... it's... capital letters. 

 

*snicker*  Okay, I have to laugh at the irony of that simple spelling error.

 

Never said I was perfect.  =P

[Valence]

Yeah well, I don't think anyone said that making occasionally a single spelling mistake was a problem.