"Phew. For a minute there, I lost myself. I lost myself."

[greygirlbeast]

I can't say if there's a general ignorance at work when it comes to sentence-level verb tense consistency or if it's something peculiar to MMO role-players. I don't see it anywhere else online. I first encountered it in Second Life, where it's rampant, then in every single MMO I've played. Curiously, the problem always involves a shift from present

Comments

[shanejayell]

I sadly think a lot of people no longer really get English...

[mythgarden]

I've been encountering such skullfucking of the English language ever since 1999 or so, back when I was a very active roleplayer. It was difficult for me to resist pulling my hair out or berating every one of the offenders, but it happened so often that I might have spent my entire roleplaying existence correcting grammar if I didn't force myself to just ignore it.

It's frustrating, though. A very improperly typed sentence can just kill the immersion.

[greygirlbeast]

but it happened so often that I might have spent my entire roleplaying existence correcting grammar

Exactly.

I have actually stopped RPing with people who engage in this sort of thing.

[setsuled]

The first half of a sentence should be in present tense, because it's happening first. The second half of the sentence should be in past tense, because it happens later.

Heh. Maybe they stop to consider whether or not it's a life sentence.

[vipermitch]

The lousy grammar is a sign that most players don't read and/or are very young.

[greygirlbeast]

It's hard for me to imagine RPers who don't read. Gamers, sure. But here are people who want to be involved in fictions, who want to create what is essentially impromptu theater. And they don't read? Jesus.

[mythgarden]

The most unfortunate part of that is, in my own experience at least, most of them DO read, or claim to. It's like they don't retain any of the language skills, or something.

[greygirlbeast]

I simply cannot imagine anyone who has ever read a single book making that mistake. It's not like, say, not knowing comma rules.

[iterum]

I see that kind of tense switching all the time in college-freshmen essays. It's not just the RPers.

[greygirlbeast]

Which raises the question, how the fuck did they get out of high school?

[iterum]

Perhaps "teaching to the test" doesn't include verb tenses.

Also: thanks for not saying "begs."