Encouraging Good English

[Songbird]

In general, how would you go about encouraging people to use clear, legible and typo-free English in a casual medium?

I ask because a role-play environment I frequent has several regulars who have repeatedly refused to improve the quality of their writing. This, in turn, has served to drive away people with a better understanding and respect for the language, which is degrading the overall quality of writing in public rooms. Official consequence cannot be taken, since there are no rules about people typing with egregious mistakes they refuse to fix (oftentimes being belligerent when faced with polite requests to do so). Since setting an example via good role-play in the same rooms has not sufficed either, what can one do beyond the non-option of outright banning?

 

[Spritely]

In general, how would you go about encouraging people to use clear, legible and typo-free English in a casual medium?

I ask because a role-play environment I frequent has several regulars who have repeatedly refused to improve the quality of their writing. This, in turn, has served to drive away people with a better understanding and respect for the language, which is degrading the overall quality of writing in public rooms. Official consequence cannot be taken, since there are no rules about people typing with egregious mistakes they refuse to fix (oftentimes being belligerent when faced with polite requests to do so). Since setting an example via good role-play in the same rooms has not sufficed either, what can one do beyond the non-option of outright banning?

You can only ask a person to write to the best of their English ability and try to improve it but some people just won't learn... I know from experience. Met a few really talented battle RPers with horrible spelling conventions that really rocked though so... 

 

[Noob Salad]

Language is hard, even for native speakers. And we hold people to standards usually well above the ones we ourselves would normally use in everyday conversation.

On a completely unrelated topic, being just plain stupid is technically not your fault, per se, but it's extremely distracting on the internet, and that's at best.

 

[Torzar]

Language is hard, even for native speakers. And we hold people to standards usually well above the ones we ourselves would normally use in everyday conversation.

On a completely unrelated topic, being just plain stupid is technically not your fault, per se, but it's extremely distracting on the internet, and that's at best.

Some people just don't want to use any kind of grammar because they're lazy. You can tell me what you want, but if someone never uses a single period in a post, but somehow knows that questions have a question mark and speech uses quotation marks, it's not about not knowing the language as well as a native speaker or being stupid any more.

I don't want people to know every single rule regarding commas (I'm far from perfect myself), but not using any at all is simply not an option.

In general, how would you go about encouraging people to use clear, legible and typo-free English in a casual medium?

I ask because a role-play environment I frequent has several regulars who have repeatedly refused to improve the quality of their writing. This, in turn, has served to drive away people with a better understanding and respect for the language, which is degrading the overall quality of writing in public rooms. Official consequence cannot be taken, since there are no rules about people typing with egregious mistakes they refuse to fix (oftentimes being belligerent when faced with polite requests to do so). Since setting an example via good role-play in the same rooms has not sufficed either, what can one do beyond the non-option of outright banning?

If you don't have the option of banning and they refuse to listen to reason, you and others could try to ignore their posts until they have an acceptable level of grammar. If nobody answers to their posts unless they have proper grammar, they have the option of either writing proper posts or leaving.

 

[Woider]

You never know who's a native or fluent speaker, and who isn't. If their english is legible, I'm fine with it.

(This only goes for the forum. If you're writing submissions and you're not a native or fluent speaker, I'd suggest getting someone to proofread and correct the submission.)

 

[CondemnedCitrus]

Well, it's damn hard to get someone to improve their writing, in fiction or in roleplay. If it's in your community, and you have some rapport with them, you could try recommending them well-written books? Or short stories, or other pieces of writing?

It sounds like your main problem is that they have no desire to improve or change- and reading would be the quickest way to change that.

 

[MESeele]

Well, it's damn hard to get someone to improve their writing, in fiction or in roleplay. If it's in your community, and you have some rapport with them, you could try recommending them well-written books? Or short stories, or other pieces of writing?

It sounds like your main problem is that they have no desire to improve or change- and reading would be the quickest way to change that.

I doubt this would help. For some reason illiteracy seems a source of pride for many. Calling them out on it either has them: acting indignant, tearing into you, or happily agreeing with a "Yup, and normally I'm waay worse than this tee-hee" sorta crap. I'd normally say to can them, but if they're really active in the community it becomes rather problematic.

 

[Magic Ted]

 Usually I warn/ban them. Seems to work. 

You never know who's a native or fluent speaker, and who isn't. If their english is legible, I'm fine with it.

(This only goes for the forum. If you're writing submissions and you're not a native or fluent speaker, I'd suggest getting someone to proofread and correct the submission.)

Actually, it's fairly easy to tell. For the most part not using things like punctuation, capitalization, grammar etc is actually the sign of a fluent, albeit lazy speaker; someone with familiarity with a language to be able to butcher it. Foreign speakers will start messing up definitions or words and things beyond the basic steps, depending on their level of familiarity, but largely they'll be better speakers simply because they're trying to convey their point across properly. 

Also cuz, ya know, western languages all follow the same rules for the most part so that is easy to them.