The Intro
In the hopes that I am allowed to post here, I would like to type out a guide to formating the text in your posts. This guide will talk about text formatting conventions that will made posts readable, as well as prevent misunderstandings among people.
As we start using forums more, a medium that doesn't have speech, emotional fluxes have started to form from how the words are laid out, as well as the words used now hold more meaning. Without tone of voice or body language, misunderstandings happen a lot.
On top of that, people with the writing abilities of a 3rd grader are now posting. The incomprehensible gabble, walls of text, missed typos and grammar errors make posts so hard to read that, in some cases, they become illegible.
Now, these are problems, especially here in a Roleplaying forum where people are typing contributions to a story. In those circumstances not only do you want your post to be read, but you also have to read other's posts to understand what is going on. In those cases, if your post can't be read, many people will just ignore your contribution to the roleplay. As well, misunderstanding can arise if the formatting is a certain way: as stated earlier, we have started attaching emotion to certain grammar mechanics and formatting.
Lavage intro aside, we can get to the tips to remember. Follow these and you cannot go wrong.
1. Break up your text into paragraphs.
This one is among the most common mistakes people make. It is a bad enough that you have to type a post that is 1000+, but there is no paragraph breaks? An endless sea of text is hard to read, as it is hard to follow with the eyes and one can easily get lost in the paragraph trying to figure out what they read and what they didn't. As a result important information is skipped or the post is ignored. So don't flame the poor person that had to read that for missing the coming orc invasion.
There! The rule to go by to know when to break your paragraph is the topic scheme. One sentence is an idea, and a paragraph is a group of ideas that discuss the same topic. For example, if your posting about how your character killed a bunch or orcs, then raced to the village to get rewarded by the princess, you could break your wall of text into two paragraphs: paragraph one would be how you killed the orc, and paragraph two would be how you got to the village afterwards and greeting the princess. This can be done with quotes if someone is saying a monologue.
2. Using conjunctions properly
A conjunction is a word that joins two related sentences, meaning to replace the period. Therefore, the words
and, [/b]or[/b],
but and [/b]because[/b] cannot start a sentence. It also helps you, as they can be used as shorthand to make you type less.
And is used when both ideas in the sentence are true and complement each other.
Or is used when only one of the ideas can be true and don't complement, or a decision.
But is used if idea two is an exception that would contradict idea one, rendering it false. Finally,
because is used if idea two elaborates on or explains idea one.
And is also used for a list of things that are together.
Or can be used for a list of choices as well. When using them this way with more than two items, have a comma replace these words with the exception for the one before the last item.
If is commonly used as a conjunction referring to when idea two is a condition to idea one to make it true, however,
if is allowed to start a sentence as long as
then is the joining word.
Also, worth noting, you should be joining two or three sentences at a time. Doing otherwise creates run-on sentences, which are hard to read and plain bad English.
3. Bold, Italics, Underline, Quotes and Caps
A font decoration is a way to further stylize a font, typically a word in a sentence or a sentence. Bold, italics and underline are the most used ones. Bold is used to made a single word stand out within a sentence, italics for the names of something important, and underline for an idea or set of words that need to be noted. There are other ones, such as strike-out; used for mostly decorating a block of text that resembles something written, and blink; which should never be used unless you want to get flamed up the ass.
Posts should never be completely in capital letters, as it implies the emotion of anger and screaming. Capital letters should be used TO MAKE A BLUNT POINT, or to emphasize something, like with bold. NeVeR tYpE lIkE yOu RaPiNg ThE cApS lOcK kEy, please: its just really annoying to look at, and makes you out to be a stupid idiot that would think this is funny.
Finally, obviously, something a character said should be in double quotes. If the speaking person is quoting someone else, then that embedded speech is in single quotes. Something a character is merely thinking should be in italics to prevent confusion. Finally, if you are quoting another user's post, then use the quote tag found in most forum post editors, or if its just speech, bold it.
4. Colours and fonts
When typing out posts, please, for the love of god, pick a font that is readable, preferably one that is either sans-serif (plain text without accents), serif (plain text with accents and arcs in the letters), or monospace (text that resembles a type writer). Cursive (text that resembles hand writing) should only be used in quoting letters and notes, and fantasy only, and only if you are typing a coded message. Some of you dearly wish to be creative, but if no one can read it, they won't.
Also, use font colours that can be seen on the screen.
Can you read this? Somehow I doubt it as it is too close to the background colour of this forum. Also nothing so bright or sharp in contrast that it hurts your eyes, for it make the post even harder to read then it already is.
Anyone like to see me always type in this colour?
5. 1337(Leet) speak, typing how you talk, and the importance of grammar
Leet speak and web abbreviations only belong in chatrooms, MMOs and IMs. They have NO place in a web forum. Why you may ask? Simple: in the IRC or the IM, it is real time, and the abbreviations make typing your thoughts faster and easier to keep the flow of the conversation from being stale and choppy. A web forum is
not in real time, therefore you can take your time to spell out your words and make sure everything is grammatically sound.
Speaking of that, grammar is important. Simple things like capitalizing the first letter in the first word of a sentence does help in making something readable. Mind you the grammar in a character's quote can be up there with
Zero Wing Ingrish (Term that refers to broken English), but to do it elsewhere is annoying.
Now, if you are writing a story in the first person you are allowed to type as you speak (or the character would speak). In fact, doing so can had a more human feel to the post. However, tread carefully in OOC speak or a normal post. Read it to yourself if your not sure, and don't misspell or misuse too many words. People have trouble understanding your post if the spelling is bad and the grammar is too off. Also, typing something that a
Sweet Valley High would say in normal conversation is very annoying, and makes people think you are dumber than you actually are (or at least I hope that).
On that note, sentence structure is important. Run-on sentences are hard to read (especially if there is no punctuation) and sentence-fragments are nonsensical and bad English. A sentence should have at least one noun and a verb associated with it. Also avoid the phrase "and then" when possible to prevent run-on sentences.
6. Overall tone of voice
The emotion that is the hardest to convey in a text format is sarcasm, so it is recommended that you use it sparely or in a community that would understand it as sarcasm. Text is a medium that has a rough time showing the emotions, so a tricky emotion like sarcasm would be lost to the reader, as tone of voice is normally needed to properly convey sarcasm.
That aside, for the same reasons it is not recommended to use sarcasm, you should pay attention to the words you use. When speaking to someone there is a difference between "Yes sir" and "Yes sir", but notice in text they look the same? Also, there is a difference between "I was hit with bottle at the bar," and "Some asshole smacked me with a bottle at that hole of a pub." Both sentences say the same thing, but we imagine the emotional state to be difference, as example B used stronger words and an active voice, while example A used weaker words and was in the passive voice.
For this reason, in OOC you are allowed to use emote-icon: punctuation symbols and letters combined to form a face or a picture replacement to show the correct emotional state for what had been mentioned. So "Yes sir
" and "Yes sir
" are now different thanks to a colon and right parentheses later interpreted to be a smiley face. As gawky as it is, it does save people with a less then par vocabulary. Quite note: emote-icons are not to be seen in IC.
In closing
You might be able to get away with some and survive not getting misread or ignored (I admit, I violate 8 often
), however, this is merely a guide in writing well and in a manner where you are not mis interpreted or skipped. Good night, and now I shall spam the forums!(Sarcasm, don't kill me!)