Typing seemingly bad can be RP

Greetings all. I have a odd story to share and maybe a lesson to impart. For a long while now Ive been RPing a character who is technically immortal. His name is Bentley Berkeley so perhaps some of you may know him.

Now like no few of us I wanted to give personality to his words, typed though they are. I didnt go with the accent route as is most typical these days, nor the little bubble popping up while I write out something.

I did something abit off the map. I went and dug out my national geos complete collection CD set and began reading the oldest issues dating back to the 1880s. This was done in an effort to by reading the original words of men, scholars and explorers who helped to shape our modern understanding of other places and the history around them.

What I found was that thier spelling was unsual to say the least. Often even within the same paragraph they would spell words very differently.

A easy example would be in one case where school was spelled skool, and schule by the same writer within about 10 words of each other.

It reminded me alot of as a child when learning to read and write and taught to sound out my words.

I started thinking this would be an interesting way to convey my characters actual age and put a spin on a characters accent so to speak.

Ive done it for a while now with mixxed results. Some seem to catch onto what I am doing and come to enjoy it, as do those who abit confused ask and once explained also usually get into it.

Some however seem compelled to see it as being extremely illiterate. Im no english professor mind you but i can if I feel compelled whip out the words. What saddens me is that so many who claim to be RP also seem to be leaning towards the Grammar 5th column( you know what I mean) riech.

I myself have never understood why some RPers hate on text shorthand. alot didnt learn to ever type properly, especially those whos only contact with a comp is for gaming( yeah insane I know but I do meet folks like that often) Text short hand is thier thing. It works well and doesnt require the reader to be a genius and those who act stupid when someone accidently pops out hte instead of the etc seem far thicker in the skull then someone who chooses to use U instead of type you.

I have seen alot putting Literate RP only in thier bios of late and that is about the silliest waste of bio space ive ever seen.

So next time you see a guy type out some seemingly odd lettering choices for a word dont just assume its poor or lazy spelling it could be anything from RP to simply thats just what they know as a reason and none of those is a reason to harrass another player.

But if you're talking, wouldn't all the alternate spellings come out the same anyway?

What? People verbalize internet acronyms as though they are words? What is this.

Odd. I thought that would be big news.

skool sounds like school, and as such most people will see you spelling it as skool as being lazy.

Schule sounds like a speech impediment, but most people will still see that as being lazy.

Rule of thumb: If they ask or you feel like you need to say OOC: "oh btw when I say X I mean Y, he just talks that way" then you're probably going too far.

Not only were Olde English spelling's different...but so was the accent. I think you would have more success if you just typed phonetically.

RPing the kind of thing the OP is talking about is very difficult to pull off well. If it's to the point where the people you're RPing with can't understand the pose, then you may want to turn a few notches down on the frequency of the Ye Olde Englishe.

The same goes with writing out words in full accent or talking in a Yoda-like way: Find that sweet spot where you can impart the effect you need without making it difficult to understand the pose.

I would actually assume on first read, that you were not a native english speaker, try to give you some leeway on spelling and see if you seem to be typing intelligent conversation....

If its just weird spelling its fine but when we start getting into 'u' and using 'lol' as punctuation...you may be Mensa material but I'm going to interact with you as if you had trouble with the GED the first couple times because you are either too lazy to actually type out words while trying to RP, have somehow completely bypassed the fact that its totally immersion breaking, or you are RPing a Freak and likely that's how my characters *would* interact with one.

I prefer to look at this from a Warhammer perspective. If you are rping an ork, "Oy' ya gitz, kill dem hummies!", it actually has meaning. If your annoyingly sloppy, and say your rping to rationalize your inability to spell...well it just doesnt seem that you are actually rping, your just lazy.

If I can't read it on the first pass, it usually means the person on the other end couldn't be bothered to use proper English to type it and the message wasn't all that important. So I'm not likely to give it a second pass. Occasionally if there's others around I may ask for a translation from someone who speaks better Intarwebz0rz than me, but don't count on it.

Heil Grammarhitler!