"Poor English in Rulebooks" Topic

Here's a poll suggestion:

Does poor English turn you off a rule set?

For me it certainly does, having bought a set of rules recently that looks like a kid in grade five wrote it. I can't help but wonder what else they got wrong…
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Tim

Yeah, I wonder about this myself. There are professional editing companies out there, even ones specifically for wargamers. I recently bought a fairly expensive nicely laid out glossy set that had errors all over the place. It even had sentences that weren't actually sentences.

It would seem that for the extra $50 USD or so you could get it edited by someone who is paid to do so and turn out a very professional looking product. Especially if you are a professional at it.

It doesn't turn me off completely but it can be confusing in a functional way at times.

It's rare that I find a well-written rule set.

I have several rulesets that sit on the shelf because I cannot stomach the bad grammar and typos. I have one that has misspelled words, sentences that are cut-off in mid stride with no punctuation, 2-3wordsruntogetherwithoutspaces, and other assorted gaffs, not to mention the grammar.

Oh.. and it switches between second person active and third person passive, often in the same paragraph.

I doesn't bother me. If I can cope with Barkerese, I can cope with anything

TOH was complaining about this the other week. He read through a fairly major rules set[1] and said "Wow. Those are finished rules? They read like first drafts…"

It's not bad spelling or grammar so much as the general organisation; there's lot of instances of "Chapter 1 explains how something works. Chapter 2 and 4 contain some of the exceptions, and 5, 6 and 7 contain both exceptions to the rule in Chapter 1 and also some exceptions to the exceptions…"

So you can play quite a few games thinking that the morale rules seem a bit odd before you finally have recourse to get to page 23 whereupon it tells you that you've been doing morale wrong in all the games so far.

Unless you're like me, in which case you have read the whole book but can't actually remember all of it clearly. Then you play your first games with the nagging feeling that you're missing some of the rules but can't remember exactly where they are in the book…

[1] I'm not naming them.

Absolutely-- and poor spelling and bad cut-and-paste would as well. I'm spending my money on a product and it should be well made. Would you accept OTHER products if they were produced in a shoddy manner?

"Would of" is an immediate turn off.

Griefbringer

It's rare that I find a well-written rule set.

Grande Armee and Might & Reason are well written

Oddly enough they share the same author…

Yes.

Amen. Hire an editor, if not a writer. Hey, I happen to know a guy…

howardshirley.com

(Shameless plug.)

The first "to, two and too" error I see and I'm no longer your customer. Dropped White Dwarf years ago because of that (that and it's nothing more than a GW advertisement now with little to no hobby value left).

Actually having just read through Shako II, I found it very well written.

Arty Conliffe and Sam Mustafa can both write English. Barker doesn't misspell or have wierd grammar so much as he likes complex run-on sentences. He's in his own category.

But yes, I've red plenty of rulz with rilly bad speling nd grammer. Itza turn-off. Dont they noe about the impotence of editing?

Poor English causes more trouble than you think. Yes it does turn me off.

That said, as noted above, rules that are well written are rare.

mjc

It seems to be a growing problem in the world, including rule sets for us, e-mail, web pages, print magazines and books and I even saw a typo on the scrolling news on my TV the other night.

I don't know if it is an example of the growing use of spell catchers without human editing, or the increasing lack of spelling and grammar skills. Perhaps the end of forced Liberal Arts courses for most non-Liberal Art college graduates since the 1970/80s has something to do with it.

I'll accept some errors in e-mails or postings, but the inability of many people to write a simple sentence with the words spelled correctly and the proper use of grammar is a pain.

It all reflects poorly on the writer (in whatever media they are attempting to communicate in).

Dan

I'd have to say, yes, it does, but by varying degrees.

If I can still understand the rules regardless of a few misspellings, wrong word choices (to, too, two), or using 'less' when 'fewer' is the correct choice, etc., then I'm not quite so turned off. However, if the wording is so poorly done that there's no hope of gleaning the author's meaning, then the chance I'll ever attempt to play the rules at all drops like a stone. (What's more, I'll regret having parted with my money and view with suspicion any other products coming from the same producer…once burned, twice shy, as they say.)

I should add that I find this more of a turn-off in rules that have a really glossy presentation full of 'eye candy' and so on, especially if these rules cost somewhere in the range of $20-$40+. For that kind of money, I expect more attention paid to proofing the text.

Poor English in a rules set is unforgivable.
It means that the author cannot be bothered to discipline himself to produce a clear set of instructions. We all know how badly a clearly written set of rules can be. How much worse would a poorly written one be?
Don't give me any nonsense about "his intent is clear".

Barker is a special case. He actually believes that he takes pains to write as unambiguously as possible. The jury is out on that, but at least he tries.

Actually I have an editing business specifically related to wargaming. You can see my work here:

link

Yes, this is a shameless plug. I created the business specifically because poorly edited rulesets bother me.

So writers, I am out there, and I offer reasonable rates.

With typical Sane Max wisdom I once heard of a rule-set for a particular scale and period, went 'Oooh I will like that!' and bought the figures immediately. I then waited a fortnight for the rules to arrive, during which time I painted the ships (lovely little things).

The rules were so badly written, so hopelessly edited, so ineptly laid out that after a day's reading I threw them in the bin. However what REALLY sank it was that throughout, the writer had used 'it's' and 'its' in exactly the opposite way – every 'it's' was wrong and every 'its'.

Luckily there was a con next weekend, and I sold the ships (beautiful little things) while in the queue to get in.

Pat

Not so much bad English which I can live with but the wrong nations English. Being British it really bugs me seing American spellings in a book released for the British market.
More of a problem in normal books than rules I guess but it still bugs me. How hard can it be to change those few words to how they should be spelt?

(Stands back, put's on hard hat and waits for incoming from the other side of the Atlantic)

It irks me that in a set of rules I just paid £18.00 GBP for and are full of glossy pictures, the author has used "countries" when he meant "country's" and other such abuses of the possesive case.
Call me picky, but it grates.

Ascent, I think you are just a victim of the majority (smile) as the mass market is the US, not the UK (300 million population vs. 70 million). More books are sold here than in the UK, so they target that particular market.

That said, I don't mind the "English" spellings I read nearly daily in books I'm reading. What I'm happy about lately is how the historical writers since WW2 have mostly stopped the silly habit of including French, Spanish, Italitan, German or Latin quotes in their works, with the seeming notion that all readers will of course be able to read and translate them (without a translation).

Dan

"Ascent, I think you are just a victim of the majority (smile) as the mass market is the US, not the UK (300 million population vs. 70 million). More books are sold here than in the UK, so they target that particular market."

But not 4 times as many (smile).

And in terms of numbers of new titles published, according to UNESCO the UK currently publishes more new titles than the USA every year*, so there are more titles written in UK English than US English!

*And that is absolute numbers. Per capita it is about 4 or 5 times as many.

I agree with the quotes thing though.

I hate bad writing too. It is bad enough in rules sets. It is even worse in the letters sent on behalf of candidates to try to get you to vote for them. I've seen it in letters from all the major UK parties, including my current MP who was an education minister.

Oooh. A bit of a rant there at the end. Sorry!

I don't mind what style of English a set of rules is written in – if it was printed in the US, I expect US English and if in the UK, then 'standard' English.

But Dan, I really like reading quotes in the original language. I probably enjoy it because it makes me feel educated…

Ok, Megaleif, you made me laugh (smile).

Dan