Adad's Request for Clarity

From Chronicles

The Issue

As someone who constantly reads and cleans common RP logs and larger logs from TinyPlots, I continue to come across the same errors requiring the same correction. Many of these errors are caught only by reading the full log; no Spell Checker can assist. I'm not speaking to completely precise grammar, because frankly despite what we all learned in school, it's rare that we actually need to be so precise in our wording. Thus, we speak colloquially. Indeed, out here on the grid (and in real life), this makes sense. You don't want your character to have a conversation where his or her words sound like the defense of a graduate thesis or a Supreme Court ruling.

However, this does not mean that everyone is off the hook for the common spelling and easy grammatical errors that we did learn in grammar school. Yes, we all learned these things, whether you consider that your schooling was a mundane educational track, a classical education, a college prep series, or something else with a more exciting name. Further, it does not matter if you properly ten-finger type, or if you hunt and peck.

To wit.

I would first like to introduce all of you to the [Shift] keys. Modern keyboards come with two of them, one on either side, so you can't pretend that you don't see them or are unaware of their existence. They are those keys that you use to make sideways smiley and frowny faces. Further, the [Caps Lock] key. Every keyboard comes with one of them. These two key types are used to capitalize letters. For instance, were you to say, "Hello, i am new to the city," that would be incorrect. "i" by itself is meaningless. Instead, you would use one of these capitalization keys in conjunction with the letter to write, "Hello, I am new to the city."

Continuing, each keyboard comes with an apostrophe key. Apostrophes are primarily used to indicate a possessive or a contraction. For instance, "Does not" becomes "doesn't." Note the apostrophe. The word "doesnt," sans apostrophe, is not a word. Similarly, "isnt" is not a word. "Cant" indicates insincerity, wont is an adjective meaning common action.

Please also look into the correct use of plurals and possessives. "alot" is incorrect. "a lot," individually, is the correct use. "Lets" versus "let's" is also popular to get wrong. The first would mean "allows," the second means "let us."

Note that all of this still applies even to characters with deliberate accents, whatever they may be. Doesnt and doesn't, whether accented or not, are the incorrect and correct terms, respectively.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that we're all perfect, just that we should try to be perfect as if we were writing a proper CharGen background to justify our characters' existence on the grid. We all make typos, we all make silly spelling errors and accidental transpositions. I myself have been known to slaughter the English language now and then. Incidentally, note that when making a possessive of a plural, the apostrophe follows the word, without any further notation as above: characters' not characters's.

If you're interested in improving your poses, these websites provide excellent yet easy to understand rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling.

Note the link to the program called "tinySpell." It is a very tiny (hence the term) application that sits quietly in your taskbar, checking words in real-time in just about every program you would use text. Fully customizable. Adad gives it five stars.