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aoisakana - blog owner
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
--- Presentation ---
   Okay, let me stray off topic a little bit now. The subject is still related to roleplaying, albeit not directly like the other topics I've touched upon.
   Presentation.

   That's right. The presentation of your posts. Now, before you tell me that "what's inside the post is what counts" .. I know that. I know that this isn't one of the most important points of roleplaying. But here's a question: What if no one can understand your posts?

   I have read posts that are so hideously deformed in presentation that I had to guess at what the typist was trying to say. At times I even had to ask the typist what they meant. Needless to say, that was a lot more work than some other rps I've been in with much more complicated plots.

   The point of fact is that roleplaying is not only about the individual -- there are very few things in this world that are only about the individual -- and one should be somewhat mindful to the comfort of others. And I do not mean using a bigger font either.

   It is fine if the chatting is OOC among friends to use abbreviations and "net-speak" .. I am quite confident that everyone in that group is able to understand everyone else but in RP there are many people that may want to read and join in in an RP but if the posts are hard to understand (eg: TyPiNg LiKe ThIs or using the same font colour as the background, etc.) then it would be much more simple for people to skip over the bothersome posts and move onto someone else's rp that is easier to read.

   Again, it's what the message inside the posts that count. Someone may have a great idea but if their posts are so hard to read, no one is going to pay attention to them and their idea will be wasted.

   Let me just say that I am not targeting people who've made the occasional typos or gramatical accidents. I do them all the time when I'm typing. I'm pretty sure you can find a couple in this post even. Who I am targeting are people who pay absolutely no regard to the presentation of their posts. Spelling/grammatical errors that a five year old makes; typing in the background colour so people have to highlight your post to read it; ambiguous messages caused by poor thought to the message .. etc. etc. etc.

   A little spelling/grammar lesson and some attention to their posts goes a long way .. especially when posts are over three or four lines long each.

   A little suggestion because I know some people may come to me saying it is hard to see the whole post in that little text line they give us: Open up a document program like word and type your post in there then cut and paste it onto the text line. You'll get to see your complete post at once and, depending on which program you use, you can check your spelling and grammar at the same time. This will free up some typing time in your rp so you can ask questions that may come up while you're writing your post, chat, etc. It gets a little getting used to, but I think it is worth it to at least try it for a while.
 aoisakana 11:22