Yes yes, I know, this is GD, not PbP. You can't actually start random chatter threads in PbP though, and I find myself quite curious about a distinct trend I've seen in PbP.
Why does everybody do their character's speech in wildly outlandish fonts?
Like instead of "Hello, my name is Mirage Over Burning Sands, but you can call me Mira", it's "Hello, my name is Mirage Over Burning Sands, but you can call me Mira". Every last weird janky bad-webcomic trick people can do to over-emphasize spoken-word text is used and it's super off-putting. It's also pervasive, I'm not sure I've ever seen/read/been in a PbP game where people didn't go to kinda lollerskates extremes to over-emphasize a character's speech.
It's like...does nobody know what quotation marks mean? I'm super confused. "Hello my name is Mira" conveys exactly the same information as "Hello my name is Mira" without the jarring and intrusive Ultramarine-level font emphasis that totally throws me out of the text. Obviously I'm missing something because EVERYBODY pulls this junk, though. So...what am I missing, if I may ask?
It's about visual pull; using font and formatting (judgements of aesthetic choices aside) to differentiate diegetic and non-diegetic text can reduce overhead by pulling your eye to what is the key parts of the text.
My group does a similar thing in our discord text elements of our game; we'll use bold to emphasises in character speech and italics to emphasise in world actions.
Yes, quotation marks do traditionally fulfil the same role but "something like this" can get lost in a body of text, whereas something like this is much easier to differentiate. This is double true when people are playing on mobile devices.
Whole HEL (History of English Language) grad level seminar on the history of punctuation or lack thereof in attributing dialogue and differentiating voices within a text (and whether diegetic or non-diegetic vare worthwhile terms in the discussion of a text where it's assumed it's all of the piece unless we were talking about something like Concrete Fiction, which I know we're not, though definitely could in a TTRPG space -- and everyone should read Jeff Noon's Vurt at minimum on this and maybe it's follow up, Pollen) aside, I was amused that to me
"Hello, my name is Mirage Over Burning Sands, but you can call me Mira".
Actually caused me to misread the intro as if I was meeting Mirage Orange Burning Sands.
So yeah, sometimes graphic "design" even within the tools available in something as relatively crude as a text editor can turn writing into cartographies producing maps of misreading. I write "design" because while some folks are intentional with their punctuations and typeface, and vary from convention with a ee Cummings or bell hooks intention, much fontplay is actually sort of a compositional stimulus aid. Playing around with color and typography gives just a little more juice to get the work done, or at least that's how it was explained to me by students or subordinates when I'd question unorthodox formatting, usually in online environments but sometimes making it into actual "oh my god do you realize this is getting bates stamped print."
Typographic conventions, for many I'd off the cuff reckon, remind a lot of people of "work writing" and so the license or assumed liberty to mess around with typography to add to the textual materiality of a character's "voice" is something I can actually sympathise with. It's an escape and an effort to render that "anything can happen" space.
I mean some font deviations do pull focus, so I can appreciate the occasional aggravated sigh in this regard. Now if you start complaining about using YouTube clips and songs as a way to punctuate a characters sentiment, then we gotta fight.
And the Keymaster was cool. But I didn't have the shorthand to keep it up.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Heh. Half the time I have absolutely no idea what's going on in Tommary's meme-overstuffed head. But then again neither does Tommary, so hey. Party unity!
But yeah. I can tolerate the whole mess when I have to, it just struck me as weird that everybody does it. Even folks who otherwise appear to be excellent writers and clearly know how to set voice apart from background text. Like, okay, I get it - not everybody knows enough of the Rules of Writing to know how to set apart character quotations. But people who clearly do and yet still monkey with their font anyways make me Samurai Jack squint sometimes. I can get the pulling focus argument, but only to an extent. If a DM, or other players, are skipping over all the text save for a character's speech every post, to the point of implementing near-sitewide custom for "Give me a way to skip most of your writing"...why's that text being written in the first place? And how does anybody get anything done?
I know this is rich coming from me, but I'd argue that keeping your writing concise and to the point would be a better habit to develop than going full Skittles on your speech text. If people aren't reading your entire post in a PbP game, there's issues beyond just readability at play, I'd wager.
Heh. Half the time I have absolutely no idea what's going on in Tommary's meme-overstuffed head. But then again neither does Tommary, so hey. Party unity!
But yeah. I can tolerate the whole mess when I have to, it just struck me as weird that everybody does it. Even folks who otherwise appear to be excellent writers and clearly know how to set voice apart from background text. Like, okay, I get it - not everybody knows enough of the Rules of Writing to know how to set apart character quotations. But people who clearly do and yet still monkey with their font anyways make me Samurai Jack squint sometimes. I can get the pulling focus argument, but only to an extent. If a DM, or other players, are skipping over all the text save for a character's speech every post, to the point of implementing near-sitewide custom for "Give me a way to skip most of your writing"...why's that text being written in the first place? And how does anybody get anything done?
I know this is rich coming from me, but I'd argue that keeping your writing concise and to the point would be a better habit to develop than going full Skittles on your speech text. If people aren't reading your entire post in a PbP game, there's issues beyond just readability at play, I'd wager.
So honestly, it's a trait that started back during early early instant message days, be it AIM, MSN, ICQ or IRC chat where a /me command would italicize text and instead of showing like
Spideycloned: Hey, hows it going - it would should as - Spideycloned arrives in the chat
I would imagine it kept as a carry over. To Davyds point, I do think visual pull and easy differentiation are important but to yours, Yurei, when people go ultra obnoxious with super loud and large fonts? It turns me off completely.
You could state there are arguments to be made about just the lack of experience or lack of narrative ability of people in pbp posts games, and don't take this as a shot to ANYONE reading this, but you can easily conclude what the intent is behind someone who very clearly states hey this is from my character versus having to type out "Spidey twitches his brow in confusion and asks "I do not understand your question, could you clarify" while gesturing toward Yurei"
Yes yes, I know, this is GD, not PbP. You can't actually start random chatter threads in PbP though, and I find myself quite curious about a distinct trend I've seen in PbP.
Why does everybody do their character's speech in wildly outlandish fonts?
Like instead of "Hello, my name is Mirage Over Burning Sands, but you can call me Mira", it's "Hello, my name is Mirage Over Burning Sands, but you can call me Mira". Every last weird janky bad-webcomic trick people can do to over-emphasize spoken-word text is used and it's super off-putting. It's also pervasive, I'm not sure I've ever seen/read/been in a PbP game where people didn't go to kinda lollerskates extremes to over-emphasize a character's speech.
It's like...does nobody know what quotation marks mean? I'm super confused. "Hello my name is Mira" conveys exactly the same information as "Hello my name is Mira" without the jarring and intrusive Ultramarine-level font emphasis that totally throws me out of the text. Obviously I'm missing something because EVERYBODY pulls this junk, though. So...what am I missing, if I may ask?
Please do not contact or message me.
It's about visual pull; using font and formatting (judgements of aesthetic choices aside) to differentiate diegetic and non-diegetic text can reduce overhead by pulling your eye to what is the key parts of the text.
My group does a similar thing in our discord text elements of our game; we'll use bold to emphasises in character speech and italics to emphasise in world actions.
Yes, quotation marks do traditionally fulfil the same role but "something like this" can get lost in a body of text, whereas something like this is much easier to differentiate. This is double true when people are playing on mobile devices.
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I also hate this trend, though sometimes I slightly raise text size and capititalize letters Like This.
*Using this for out of game or person talk also helps*
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Whole HEL (History of English Language) grad level seminar on the history of punctuation or lack thereof in attributing dialogue and differentiating voices within a text (and whether diegetic or non-diegetic vare worthwhile terms in the discussion of a text where it's assumed it's all of the piece unless we were talking about something like Concrete Fiction, which I know we're not, though definitely could in a TTRPG space -- and everyone should read Jeff Noon's Vurt at minimum on this and maybe it's follow up, Pollen) aside, I was amused that to me
Actually caused me to misread the intro as if I was meeting Mirage Orange Burning Sands.
So yeah, sometimes graphic "design" even within the tools available in something as relatively crude as a text editor can turn writing into cartographies producing maps of misreading. I write "design" because while some folks are intentional with their punctuations and typeface, and vary from convention with a ee Cummings or bell hooks intention, much fontplay is actually sort of a compositional stimulus aid. Playing around with color and typography gives just a little more juice to get the work done, or at least that's how it was explained to me by students or subordinates when I'd question unorthodox formatting, usually in online environments but sometimes making it into actual "oh my god do you realize this is getting bates stamped print."
Typographic conventions, for many I'd off the cuff reckon, remind a lot of people of "work writing" and so the license or assumed liberty to mess around with typography to add to the textual materiality of a character's "voice" is something I can actually sympathise with. It's an escape and an effort to render that "anything can happen" space.
I mean some font deviations do pull focus, so I can appreciate the occasional aggravated sigh in this regard. Now if you start complaining about using YouTube clips and songs as a way to punctuate a characters sentiment, then we gotta fight.
And the Keymaster was cool. But I didn't have the shorthand to keep it up.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Heh. Half the time I have absolutely no idea what's going on in Tommary's meme-overstuffed head. But then again neither does Tommary, so hey. Party unity!
But yeah. I can tolerate the whole mess when I have to, it just struck me as weird that everybody does it. Even folks who otherwise appear to be excellent writers and clearly know how to set voice apart from background text. Like, okay, I get it - not everybody knows enough of the Rules of Writing to know how to set apart character quotations. But people who clearly do and yet still monkey with their font anyways make me Samurai Jack squint sometimes. I can get the pulling focus argument, but only to an extent. If a DM, or other players, are skipping over all the text save for a character's speech every post, to the point of implementing near-sitewide custom for "Give me a way to skip most of your writing"...why's that text being written in the first place? And how does anybody get anything done?
I know this is rich coming from me, but I'd argue that keeping your writing concise and to the point would be a better habit to develop than going full Skittles on your speech text. If people aren't reading your entire post in a PbP game, there's issues beyond just readability at play, I'd wager.
Please do not contact or message me.
So honestly, it's a trait that started back during early early instant message days, be it AIM, MSN, ICQ or IRC chat where a /me command would italicize text and instead of showing like
Spideycloned: Hey, hows it going - it would should as - Spideycloned arrives in the chat
I would imagine it kept as a carry over. To Davyds point, I do think visual pull and easy differentiation are important but to yours, Yurei, when people go ultra obnoxious with super loud and large fonts? It turns me off completely.
You could state there are arguments to be made about just the lack of experience or lack of narrative ability of people in pbp posts games, and don't take this as a shot to ANYONE reading this, but you can easily conclude what the intent is behind someone who very clearly states hey this is from my character versus having to type out "Spidey twitches his brow in confusion and asks "I do not understand your question, could you clarify" while gesturing toward Yurei"