The Grace Academy

Some people may find this useful. To others, well... it's still good information to review.

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Punctuation and Grammar

Now, English is a very, very important part of Role-Playing, and we can�t stress enough the importance of it. We�re not asking you for the perfect English, but please, just the basic rules of grammar would suffice. It may not be that everyone here uses English as a first language and therefore anything that deviates from the basic rules does make it hard for the non-native English speakers to read.

Catch our drift?

Makes things easier for everyone to understand�especially after going through 18 pages of an RP, and trying to translate the awful English (if it so does happen).

Basic rules of English (no, we did not create this up, these are things taught in an English class. Got a problem with it? Take it up with the guys from the 14th century)

Capitalization: Remember to always capitalise the first word of the letter at the beginning of every sentence. The same goes for names the first-person �I�. After a full stop, the next letter gets capitalised. Even a kindergartener would know that, and this rule applies to most languages all over the world. So no excuse about not knowing this one.

Spelling: It is IMPORTANT to practice proper spelling. We condone the use net-speak of chat-speak here. It�s because (as I�ve said above), not everyone here is a native English speaker, hence net-speak and chat-speak wreaks havoc on trying to understand; unless of course you meant it to be so in a dialogue or a note. Sticky-caps are also a no-no.

Full stops and commas: It�s always easier to understand someone's role-playing when full stops and commas are introduced in their appropriate places i.e. end of sentences, in lists etc.

Space: After the end of every punctuation (regardless of a full stop or a comma) comes a space before the next word. Don�t know what a spacebar is? *takes a deep breath* IT�S THE BIGGEST KEY ON YOUR KEYBOARD.

Paragraphing: Paragraphs make it easier on the eyes to read and thus people will actually read your posts too. It�s a lovely result of paragraphing. The rules of paragraphing are: after you complete a subject and want to start a new one, change to a new paragraph; if you have more than one character, don't block it but use a new paragraph every time they speak; if you're speaking to different people in one post, don't block it again but switch to a new paragraph when you talk to a different person so they know who you're talking to

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Now, there are many ways to RP but over here on Grace Academy we stick to the most common; because it�s easy to read and everyone understands it. Please, please, please do try and follow the suggested way:

Dialogue:
Dialogue is usually, typed in double quotes (a.k.a. inverted commas). Which are these babies: � Right here �

Thoughts:
Thoughts are usually typed in single quotes (a.k.a. apostrophe). Which are: � Right Here � and are usually italicised: Like So.

Description and actions: Ala how a piece of fiction is written or a novel/story. Read books and stories to get a drift on how a good RP should sound/read like.

Example:

Okay, so the above example gets the message across, but it�s pretty drab and dull. So let�s spice it up.

Example 2:

So there, sounds a lot better doesn�t it?

Putting all of these together, you get:

See, wasn�t so hard was it?

(NOTE: Credit for this goes to Jo. She wrote this for another site.)