Topic

Dear Tiny Speck,

Please hire a copy editor? Sometimes you are confusing.  (I know it's not feasible but I'd totally do it for free.)

Love, me.

Posted 4 months ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Examples?  I'm curious.  (Although I know I have seen examples myself.)

    diaveborn would make an excellent free copy editor.  She has edited magazine articles for pay before, and she did it well!

    (Full disclosure: I am diaveborn's husband.  But I was only her boyfriend when she had her editing job.  So, you know, I was totally unbiased back then.)
    Posted 4 months ago by Don Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Hehe, when I got to the "She has edited magazine articles for pay" part I was very confused until I saw who wrote this (since I didn't remember telling anyone here) :)

    Some good examples are:
    -the whole nonsense with the upgrade cards and the math (where upgrade card A has percentage A, the next card B has percentage B, but was B a percentage of the value after A was applied or not?)
    -the fact that you can turn two upgrade cards off by an option on the hoe and the scraper but one says "turn something on" and the other says "turn something off" - one's referring to turning the upgrade card off and one's referring to turning on a "party mode" of harvesting together (which also turns that upgrade card off) so the verbs aren't wrong but they're unnecessarily confusing
    and of course
    -general typos

    There have been plenty of posts/replies from people on general typos and stuff like that gets sorted out fairly well. What I'm suggesting with a copy editor would be someone who could make sure things are as clear as possible in description (and of course look for typos while they're at it).  Since this game is pretty complicated in the MMO style of things, it would be good to avoid anything that doesn't have to be confusing.  With the upgrade cards for example, it would have been very simple to distinguish what exactly the percentages meant when you got multiple upgrade cards, and it was just that (I imagine) the people who were writing the text understandably had other things that were more their job to do than thinking about the exact wording and meaning of the text and attempting to anticipate how that wording might sound.

    I mention hiring a copy editor because having someone who is trained through schooling or practice to think about those issues can be a huge help (and in the case of the upgrade cards may have saved not only some player confusion but staff time in explaining/dev time in going back and fixing it).

    Of course I think a full-time copy editor might be cost prohibitive but it might be neat if they could look for that in someone who had other skill sets they were hiring for.   (Also, I mention hiring instead of having players do this because while players are great at spotting and reporting typos they would not have access to unreleased content in order to preview wording etc before it goes live.)
    Posted 4 months ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree that wording is tremendously important.

    The game has plenty of wit and quirky verbal charm, which we all love. But sometimes, it's grating (prime example: the "leisure activity" that is laggy gardening... NOT), or just plain confusing or grammatically incorrect.

    A Copy Czar who really knew his or her stuff and cared deeply about clarity and accuracy in communication throughout the game (and update tweets)—while retaining humor and whimsy as appropriate—could make a meaningful contribution.
    Posted 4 months ago by Pascale Subscriber! | Permalink