Oolite Bulletins

Gimi wrote:

I'm learning and improving my English writing skills on an Internet forum about a space trading game.

So am I, and I'm English!

I passionately HATE em-dash in online / onscreen use.
Because of them darn wannabe-bureaucrats at Wikipedia.

On a German keyboard, the only thing directly accessible is this - (minus).
So everybody uses this - one.

But because some encyclopedias use the em-dash in their PRINTED copies, it has to be the bloody same in online wikipedia.

So that nobody using their search feature will ever find the articles they are looking for, as long as wikipedias "correct" version of the bloody title contains an em-dash.

Buggers.

snork wrote:

On a German keyboard, the only thing directly accessible is this - (minus).

On the Mac keyboard (the UK one at least), ALT - gives you an en-dash, and ALT SHIFT - gives you an em-dash. But it can make electronic text-searching tricky, if the search function is pernickity, You should try searching typeset PDFs for a phrase like "a fine fluffy muffin" (probably best not to google that one, you never know what it might produce ): you'll get nothing back if the typesetter has used ligatures (special single characters for fl, ff, fi, ffi and others). This, and the crude nature of e-book typography, is probably why the use of ligatures, even in printed books, seems to be dying out.

Gimi wrote:

I'm learning and improving my English writing skills on an Internet forum about a space trading game.

Doh! I have all my english from videogames and computer things!
Please insert coin.
I start all telephone calls with "press one for english, drücken Sie die Zwei für Deutsch"
People like "press Fire when ready", "unexpected error", "Syntax error"
or at the end of a Meeting "Terrorists win".

M-M-M-Monsterkill...

You may laugh now, but all your base are belong to us !

Hehe, same here. My biggest improvement in vocabulary while in school came from playing Infocom text adventures and The Bard's Tale. Unfortunately, the swords and sorcery domain wasn't so useful in school english

maik wrote:

Hehe, same here. My biggest improvement in vocabulary while in school came from playing Infocom text adventures and The Bard's Tale. Unfortunately, the swords and sorcery domain wasn't so useful in school english

That's just wut we need, the opshun to select educationul and grammor or math in the oolite options menu. When activatud and when alert leval goes to condishun red the game pawses and asks a questyun and won't unpause till you ansir. If the answer is wrung, it will give you the correct answer and ask you anuther question of slightly lower skill until you answer won correctly.

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

That's just wut we need, the opshun to select educationul and grammor or math in the oolite options menu. When activatud and when alert leval goes to condishun red the game pawses and asks a questyun and won't unpause till you ansir. If the answer is wrung, it will give you the correct answer and ask you anuther question of slightly lower skill until you answer won correctly.

That is essentially how the English education system is working these days. When I were a lad, the joke was "Provided you spell your name right, you get a CSE". Now it is "Provided you turn up for the exam, you get a dozen or so A* grade GCSEs". (The A* had to be invented once they had got to the point of giving everyone an A in everything, and didn't know where to go next.) By 2020, I'm expecting babies to be issued with a PhD on completion of potty-training.

Maybe the game could print out a qualification certificate on reaching each of the combat grades? Like the Seti@Home certificates.

SandJ wrote:

By 2020, I'm expecting babies to be issued with a PhD on completion of potty-training.

<howls> I'll refrain from joining with you in that rant, S&J... somehow!