On spelling, punctuation and capitalisation:
Don't wanna sound like we're picking on you here, DS. We're not. At least I hope we're not. I'm not, anyway.
It's just that, well...precise English isn't really an issue in normal board posts and in-game chat. But when you're talking published work like
fanfiction, or even a mission arc like this one, then yes, it does matter.
You really need to make sure everything is properly formatted, that there's no obvious spelling mistakes or bad punctuation. I think grammar's a little
more flexible there, since a lot of mission text would be speech. But even there, you wanna be careful.
Most folks want to play stuff, they don't want to edit it for you. Of course, among the SG we'll do both, but if you're making stuff for a wider
audience...
Speaking personally, when I'm chatting with someone or reading board posts, I don't really notice all-lowercase text or anything like that. I focus on
the communication. But there isn't that same sense of immediacy and another person when I'm reading a story or NPC text in an arc. I notice mistakes.
There's also the issue of length. When you're talking in-game or even posting here, the messages are short. In a piece of fiction or a mission arc,
well, we're reading a lot more text at a time. So it needs to be easily comprehensible. Obvious errors make stuff less clear and readable.
Now. When you're making a mission arc, what can you do? Well, what I always do is type my text in a word processor first, spell check, and THEN copy-paste
into the mission editor. I do this because, quite honestly, my spelling sucks as well. But since I know my spelling is awful, I go the extra mile to make sure
I don't make mistakes. Not where it matters.
Granted, I run City of Heroes in windowed mode; I don't know how well alt-tabbing or window switching works for you. If switching back and forth is a
problem, you can grab one of those text templates that list all the MA fields, and do the bulk of your writing offline.
Also, the mission architect files saved locally are plain text, so you can always open one of those in a text editor as well.
-- Acyl
Don't wanna sound like we're picking on you here, DS. We're not. At least I hope we're not. I'm not, anyway.
It's just that, well...precise English isn't really an issue in normal board posts and in-game chat. But when you're talking published work like
fanfiction, or even a mission arc like this one, then yes, it does matter.
You really need to make sure everything is properly formatted, that there's no obvious spelling mistakes or bad punctuation. I think grammar's a little
more flexible there, since a lot of mission text would be speech. But even there, you wanna be careful.
Most folks want to play stuff, they don't want to edit it for you. Of course, among the SG we'll do both, but if you're making stuff for a wider
audience...
Speaking personally, when I'm chatting with someone or reading board posts, I don't really notice all-lowercase text or anything like that. I focus on
the communication. But there isn't that same sense of immediacy and another person when I'm reading a story or NPC text in an arc. I notice mistakes.
There's also the issue of length. When you're talking in-game or even posting here, the messages are short. In a piece of fiction or a mission arc,
well, we're reading a lot more text at a time. So it needs to be easily comprehensible. Obvious errors make stuff less clear and readable.
Now. When you're making a mission arc, what can you do? Well, what I always do is type my text in a word processor first, spell check, and THEN copy-paste
into the mission editor. I do this because, quite honestly, my spelling sucks as well. But since I know my spelling is awful, I go the extra mile to make sure
I don't make mistakes. Not where it matters.
Granted, I run City of Heroes in windowed mode; I don't know how well alt-tabbing or window switching works for you. If switching back and forth is a
problem, you can grab one of those text templates that list all the MA fields, and do the bulk of your writing offline.
Also, the mission architect files saved locally are plain text, so you can always open one of those in a text editor as well.
-- Acyl