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Expert DragonRider
Expert DragonRider
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Joined: March 11th, 2005, 11:30 pm
Posts: 1986
Location: Glasgow
Affiliation: Dragonriders
Post Guidelines
Okie dokie people, I'm sure this has something for everyone around here. I'm not picking on one specific person, and no names are going to be mentioned. This is just a helpful little guide for people new to the site. I hope I'm not offending anyone with this.
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Chatline/HUB Roleplay Methods Not Accepted.

Yes, I know a lot of you were recruited from chatlines, and I thank you for joining the site. However, as much as you're used to roleplaying like this:

*Sits on the rock and thinks about the meaning of life, and is completely unaware of her surroundings. Is surprised when he comes and touches her on the shoulder*

it's not going to work around here. I'll rewrite this post so that it works out.

The girl sat on the rock as she thought about the meaning of life, completely unaware of her surroundings. She was surprised when he came and touched her on the shoulder.

Just adding a few subjects (he, she etc.) and changing the tense, the post works out, if a bit short. If someone new were to join a chatline, I’m sure you’d expect them to adopt your style. This is only fair.
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Passable Grammar and Spelling is Required of Posts.

Say you have an English paper due. I don't think you're going to hand in a paper that looks like this:

She lookde around and thouhg to herslef: 'i dont think i'm in kansas anymore.'

Edited and spiffed up, it looks kinda like this:

She looked around and thought to herself: 'I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore.'

I'm not expecting everyone to be perfect, because that's impossible and very unfair. However, with so many programs out there that help with spelling, it's inexcusable to have a post full of so many typos like the first one in this example. I don't care how you fix it; personally, I type out the majority of my posts in Microsoft Word and then paste it into the reply box. Does it take a bit longer? Yes. Does it get irritating? Sometimes. Is it worth it? To me, yes.

As well, there is a little icon in the upper left had corner of the page. Some of you wonder what that might be. It's a spell checker, actually. It links you to a site that will check your spelling. Cool, huh?

And, if you catch a mistake AFTER you posted, there is a little thing called the 'edit' button. It's handy whenever you need to change something around.
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Posts Should be in Third Person, and Past Tense.

Because we are, in essence, telling a story from different points of view, the tense should be consistent. After all, reading a book with changing tenses gets mighty confusing, and reading a roleplay thread like that is also confusing. Here are a few examples:

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Changes are Underlined
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BAD: I sat down on the rock and gazed at the moon. Sighing, I marveled at the beautiful sight.

The tense was okay, the point of view wasn’t. It should look like this:

GOOD: She sat down on the rock and gazed at the moon. Sighing, she marveled at the beautiful sight.

Short, I know, but it gets my point across.
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Here’s another example:

BAD: She smiles at the boy and tries to catch his eye. She pouts when she realizes that this will not work, and stalks back to her dorm to sulk.

Point of view is okay, but the tense is not. However, it’s easily fixed with a few minor edits. Like this:

GOOD: She smiled at the boy and tried to catch his eye. She pouted when she realized that this wouldn’t work, and stalked back to her dorm to sulk.

Again, a little short, but I’m getting to that.
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Posts Should be at Least a Paragraph in Length.

The only thing that bothers me more than wrong tense and bad grammar is short post length. Now, I know that this won’t work every single time, but please try to make an effort. How can you show people what your character is like if you only write down what they’re saying? Describe thoughts and actions in the post. Are they sitting down? Standing up? Twiddling their thumbs? Biting their lip? What’s going on in their head? All of these things make for a longer post, which keeps me (and your fellow roleplayers) interested.

Okay, so if it doesn't follow these restrictions it can and will be deleted, thanks.

Glenwing.

thank you to Kieran Dagotta and Cassidy Morian of Demon High for allowing me to use these.


February 27th, 2006, 6:38 pm Profile
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