Octiovus' guide to good communication.

[Octiovus]

This is a guide to how to improve your typing and create a better atmosphere for everyone, and in turn improve your roleplay. Good typing can make everything a lot easier to understand, nothing is worse than not understanding what has just been said.

Step one : Change that nasty default text, and emote colour.

It's one thing for it to be hard to understand a sentence, but with the default emote colour - you can't even get a second chance to decipher it. It blends RIGHT in with the journal colour, do us all a favour and change it.

As for the text colour - that's ugly too, and unoriginal. Pick a colour that suits your character, if he's an angry Orc, he won't have pink text. But at the same time, also consider how easy the colour is to read in journal, too.

Step two: Take your time, use that shift key.

English might not be your native language - no-one is saying that's wrong here, I cannot emphasis that point enough. What you can do, is just slow it down a bit, a well typed sentence that took a little longer is better than a sentence that would make Einstein throw his hands up and go "I don't know, you tell me!" whacking a capital letter at the front of your sentences DOES improve everything immensely. Once you get into the habit, it's easy.

Step three: Add some punctuation

Adding a comma here and there, or the odd apostrophe doesn't hurt much. But it DOES make it look like you've thought about what you're typing, and make everything a darned sight easier to read.

Step four: Use more than a word a line, people.
The
One
Word
Line
Approach gets very tiresome, very quickly. It is hard to incorporate any aspects of good typing if your only typing a line at a time here. Not to mention it's slow as hell, and darned irritating to be on the receiving end of. If we chatted like that in real life - I'm sure there'd be more violence in the world. Spare us it in game.

Final step: Always check what your about to send!

We could be saved so many ".brb gotta pee" moments if people simply checked what they are typing. We could also be spared the ";;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;Hail"'s as well. Those things are atmosphere ruiners for sure.

In closing, I hope you've learned something useful, even if it was only something minor. We all have to start somewhere, don't get discouraged thinking your a slow typer, or not good at speaking English. We all had to start somewhere, even I, was a little poorly typing brat at some point. *Grins*

Cheers.
Oct'.

[Coma Black]

You may delete this but although all of the above is very good advice, and yes it would help understanding what people say that little more. Especially the part about the colour text, I find it very irritating when I can’t go back and read something in my journal. For instance my Leprechauns text is all Green.

But I would just like to point out that not everyone can touch type, or type with immense speed to keep up with the conversation. I know for a fact that some people get very frustrated when they try to have a conversation but are unable to say all they can because they can’t type properly at speed. I have had comments in the past that I do in fact type very fast and they find it difficult to respond to what I say.

Anyway, all I am saying is that you can’t expect everyone to use proper punctuation etc if they find it hard enough just to type a few lines. But yes, one liners are annoying.

This is to anyone, if you would like some help with your typing, because you don’t want to feel singled out, use a programme called Mavis Beacon, or there is one for Touch Typing but I will have to find out whom that one is by.

Also if you are at all worried about typing reports or stories on the forums I would suggest doing what I do and type it in word first, then all grammar and spelling errors will be picked up, then you can just copy and paste.

Oct feel free to delete this or edit it if you think any of the information is relevant.

[Aelthas]

Patience is a virtue.

[Cambylobacter]

A good piece sir.

If I may add one thing, that I think is used too often (as in, once is too often...) is...

.. correcting a mistake in spatial with "*".

Example:

Player: "I must leave now and return to Minco"
Player "*Minoc"

Now everytime I have ever seen a spelling mistake I've known what the player intended to say, and the asterisked correction in spatial does more to break the atmosphere than the typo did. Does anybody else feel the same way or am I alone there? :/

[Coma Black]

you not all on your own. I must admit 9/10 i know what someone means, but i will admit i occasionally do it, or if i do a spelling mistake i do a *cough* or something, makes me feel like others don't think i am being daft.

[Kiran]

If ya make a spelling mistake you can either do *coughs covering his mouth with a hand* and then write whatever it is you really wanted to say cos sometimes bit hard to understand