I am a firm believer that names should be spelled correctly. Some quick research can save you from a lot of embarassment later on.
How unfortunate, then, that the name of Bizarre Creations should be misspelled not once, but twice in a recent Joystiq article. It's even more frustrating that the article begins with a screenshot including the correct spelling, as though author Jessica Conditt wasn't even aware of what she was posting.
The Internet is reporting that the lead designer on Bizzare Creations' Blur has created an independent game studio called Totem Games, but this is a lie.
and
Matt Cavanagh, a former Bizzare Creations employee, has created Totem Games Ltd., an independent game studio with a mission to help "make the world a happier place."
Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2011/07/09/matt-cavanagh-forms-a-new-studio-didnt-have-anything-to-do-wit/
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Friday, July 8, 2011
I'm guessing it's Paul and Ringo
This one's just a simple matter of laziness on the part of the writer.
A recent Joystiq post boasts the headline "Full Driver: San Francisco car list has two Spiders, two Beatles and a Hornet."
Did you see it? Here it is again, with my usual markings on the errors:
Full Driver: San Francisco car list has two Spiders, two Beatles and a Hornet
It seems Mr. Schramm was trying to be clever and list the cars named for insects in his headline, but instead named the influential British band. It would have been a simple matter to look at the full list, posted in the article itself, to see the correct spelling.
Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2011/07/08/full-driver-san-francisco-car-list-has-two-spiders-two-beatles/
A recent Joystiq post boasts the headline "Full Driver: San Francisco car list has two Spiders, two Beatles and a Hornet."
Did you see it? Here it is again, with my usual markings on the errors:
Full Driver: San Francisco car list has two Spiders, two Beatles and a Hornet
It seems Mr. Schramm was trying to be clever and list the cars named for insects in his headline, but instead named the influential British band. It would have been a simple matter to look at the full list, posted in the article itself, to see the correct spelling.
Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2011/07/08/full-driver-san-francisco-car-list-has-two-spiders-two-beatles/
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Two bees, or not two bees?
While reading through Penny Arcade this morning, I came across a discussion on Double Fine's new game Trenched, which led to some interesting linguistic research.
The game offers the ability to customize your character, which Tycho says can result in
"[l]umbering Assault murderwalkers that emit doom, (comparatively) lithe Engineering chassis that deal the bulk of their damage with Heavy Turrets and cheap upgrades, or Standard cores that split the difference."
It's not often that you hear the word "chassis" used in general conversation, much less the plural form, which led me to question what the actual plural of the noun is. Is Tycho correct in his usage here? A quick trip to Dictionary.com gave me the surprising results.
"Chassis" is the correct spelling of both the singular and plural forms. In this aspect, the word falls into the same category as nouns like "moose" and "deer." "Chassis," however, has the unique distinction that, while spelled the same, the two forms are actually pronounced differently, probably due to the French influence. Dictionary.com gives the pronunciation for the singular as [chas'-ee, -is, shas'-ee] and the plural as [chas'-eez, shas'-].
If anyone out there is aware of other nouns like this, I'd love to hear about them!
Source: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/7/1/
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/chassis
The game offers the ability to customize your character, which Tycho says can result in
"[l]umbering Assault murderwalkers that emit doom, (comparatively) lithe Engineering chassis that deal the bulk of their damage with Heavy Turrets and cheap upgrades, or Standard cores that split the difference."
It's not often that you hear the word "chassis" used in general conversation, much less the plural form, which led me to question what the actual plural of the noun is. Is Tycho correct in his usage here? A quick trip to Dictionary.com gave me the surprising results.
"Chassis" is the correct spelling of both the singular and plural forms. In this aspect, the word falls into the same category as nouns like "moose" and "deer." "Chassis," however, has the unique distinction that, while spelled the same, the two forms are actually pronounced differently, probably due to the French influence. Dictionary.com gives the pronunciation for the singular as [chas'-ee, -is, shas'-ee] and the plural as [chas'-eez, shas'-].
If anyone out there is aware of other nouns like this, I'd love to hear about them!
Source: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/7/1/
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/chassis
Friday, July 1, 2011
Dueling banjos - I mean Analogs
Some quick points about this posting at Steve Napierski's "Dueling Analogs":
Honestly not sure that a downloadable content (DLC) model would even work for webcomics. Maybe if Alan Moore had released The Watchmen as a webcomic and the first eleven issues were free and the twelve you had to pay for…Maybe that would have worked.
Ignoring the fact that Steve omits the subject and verb in the first clause ("I'm honestly not sure..."), he goes on to use the cardinal form of the number twelve, rather than the ordinal version 'twelfth,' unintentionally implying that there are twelve more issues after the eleven free ones, instead of a single twelfth issue.
----------------------------------
That of course means that people even knows that your webcomic exists in the first place, but that’s a completely different story.
The word 'people' is, of course, the plural form of 'person,' which requires the plural verb 'know.'
----------------------------------
Some of it I’m not so sure about or just think are flat out a scam.
Another case of subject-verb mismatch. In this case, the subject is the pronoun 'some,' which oddly enough, indicates a plurality of objects, but is nonetheless singular. The correct verb here is 'is.'
----------------------------------
I’m a huge fan of the Katamari Damacy fan, but they DLC of Beautiful Katamari wasn’t really DLC, but already existing content that the developer had created, was actually on the physical disc you purchased andt that you had to pay for to unlock.
Welcome to the Department of Redundancy Department. He should omit the second 'fan' unless he actually means that he is a fan of people who are fans of Katamari Damacy. Oh, and we can't forget the typo!
-----------------------------------
Pretty much when the content you download in needed to make the game complete, or good even, and just should have been originally part of the game initially that’s when I have a problem with it.
Ignoring for a moment the horrible punctuation in the second clause, there is a simple misuse of words here. He mistakenly uses the preposition 'in' instead fo the verb 'is.' Spellcheck won't catch that!
-----------------------------------
One day we’ll be explaining to our grand kids that when we were their age we actually had to touch the physical media the game came on and they’ll response, “OMGSTFUIDBULOL”. Because by then everything will be digital and the spoken language will have degraded into a string of textese.
And, last but not least, we have the use of the noun 'response' instead of the related verb 'respond.'
Source: http://www.duelinganalogs.com/comic/2011/06/30/if-webcomics-had-dlc/
Honestly not sure that a downloadable content (DLC) model would even work for webcomics. Maybe if Alan Moore had released The Watchmen as a webcomic and the first eleven issues were free and the twelve you had to pay for…Maybe that would have worked.
Ignoring the fact that Steve omits the subject and verb in the first clause ("I'm honestly not sure..."), he goes on to use the cardinal form of the number twelve, rather than the ordinal version 'twelfth,' unintentionally implying that there are twelve more issues after the eleven free ones, instead of a single twelfth issue.
----------------------------------
That of course means that people even knows that your webcomic exists in the first place, but that’s a completely different story.
The word 'people' is, of course, the plural form of 'person,' which requires the plural verb 'know.'
----------------------------------
Some of it I’m not so sure about or just think are flat out a scam.
Another case of subject-verb mismatch. In this case, the subject is the pronoun 'some,' which oddly enough, indicates a plurality of objects, but is nonetheless singular. The correct verb here is 'is.'
----------------------------------
I’m a huge fan of the Katamari Damacy fan, but they DLC of Beautiful Katamari wasn’t really DLC, but already existing content that the developer had created, was actually on the physical disc you purchased andt that you had to pay for to unlock.
Welcome to the Department of Redundancy Department. He should omit the second 'fan' unless he actually means that he is a fan of people who are fans of Katamari Damacy. Oh, and we can't forget the typo!
-----------------------------------
Pretty much when the content you download in needed to make the game complete, or good even, and just should have been originally part of the game initially that’s when I have a problem with it.
Ignoring for a moment the horrible punctuation in the second clause, there is a simple misuse of words here. He mistakenly uses the preposition 'in' instead fo the verb 'is.' Spellcheck won't catch that!
-----------------------------------
One day we’ll be explaining to our grand kids that when we were their age we actually had to touch the physical media the game came on and they’ll response, “OMGSTFUIDBULOL”. Because by then everything will be digital and the spoken language will have degraded into a string of textese.
And, last but not least, we have the use of the noun 'response' instead of the related verb 'respond.'
Source: http://www.duelinganalogs.com/comic/2011/06/30/if-webcomics-had-dlc/
Friday, June 24, 2011
It's a Penny Arcade trifecta!
I've read a few reviews of F3AR this morning, and so I was interested to see what the guys at Penny Arcade had to say about it. It looks like an interesting concept, and I am looking forward to my chance to check it out. While reading Tycho's thoughts, I came across 3 different grammatical errors I would like to address here. Now, Penny Arcade posts generally take a lighter, conversational tone, but that doesn't mean they can completely throw out the rules of grammar.
First of all, Tycho left out a word. While in some cases, this is acceptable for the conversational tone of their work, in this case, it appears to be completely unintentional and interrupts the flow of the piece:
Each you conquer a level, you are allowed to play that level as “Paxton Fettel,” a kind of ravening superghost core to the fiction. (The word missing here is "time," as in "Each time you...")
Not too much further in the article - in the very next sentence, actually - he again omits a word. Though it does fit with the conversational tone, it fails to fit the parallel structure of a list.
He can hoist enemies on a cord of spectral blood, possess human hosts, and a couple other tricks.
Each of the actions listed begins with a verb except the last one. Taken on its own, this is an incomplete statement ("He can a couple other tricks"), necessitating the use of the verb do.
And finally, Tycho is the victim of one of the more common mistakes: tense shifting. He explains a situation in the present tense, then inexplicably switches to past tense.
[Expletive] Run is a four player race against a Wave of Mutilation that ends the round if it touched any member of your team (I edited the expletive out of the title - this is a family-friendly blog, after all).
The correct statement would be to have both of these verbs in the present tense. This is the same trick used in literary criticism - historical context is in past tense ("Shakespeare wrote"), but the internal narrative is present tense ("Romeo goes").
Source: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/6/24/enervator/
First of all, Tycho left out a word. While in some cases, this is acceptable for the conversational tone of their work, in this case, it appears to be completely unintentional and interrupts the flow of the piece:
Each you conquer a level, you are allowed to play that level as “Paxton Fettel,” a kind of ravening superghost core to the fiction. (The word missing here is "time," as in "Each time you...")
Not too much further in the article - in the very next sentence, actually - he again omits a word. Though it does fit with the conversational tone, it fails to fit the parallel structure of a list.
He can hoist enemies on a cord of spectral blood, possess human hosts, and a couple other tricks.
Each of the actions listed begins with a verb except the last one. Taken on its own, this is an incomplete statement ("He can a couple other tricks"), necessitating the use of the verb do.
And finally, Tycho is the victim of one of the more common mistakes: tense shifting. He explains a situation in the present tense, then inexplicably switches to past tense.
[Expletive] Run is a four player race against a Wave of Mutilation that ends the round if it touched any member of your team (I edited the expletive out of the title - this is a family-friendly blog, after all).
The correct statement would be to have both of these verbs in the present tense. This is the same trick used in literary criticism - historical context is in past tense ("Shakespeare wrote"), but the internal narrative is present tense ("Romeo goes").
Source: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/6/24/enervator/
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
The E3 Edition, part 1
During E3, there are loads of announcements coming from all parts of the industry. This can be a lot to keep up with for any news outlet, and mistakes will happen. Case in point: the following was found in a follow-up article on the newly-announced title Fable: The Journey.
What about the Fable series' two other offensize components, shooting and melee?
Source:
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/08/fable-the-journey-preview-speak-and-spell/
What about the Fable series' two other offensize components, shooting and melee?
Source:
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/08/fable-the-journey-preview-speak-and-spell/
Friday, May 6, 2011
Strike that, reverse it
As a bit of a genealogy buff (I've done my share of family history research), I had to cringe a bit when reading an otherwise excellent report about the new Assassin's Creed game. Joystiq's own Editor-in-Chief, Chris Grant wrote:
"In Revelations, you'll play as both 12th century stabber Altair and his 16th century ancestor Ezio..."
Ignoring the missing comma for the appellative, there is a major confusion of terminology here.
For those unfamiliar with the genealogy terms, 'ancestor' refers to a relative from a previous generation, while 'descendant' is one of a future generation. Analogues to these would be 'forefathers' and 'progeny,' respectively.
So the correct statement would be that you play as Altair and his descendant, Ezio.
Source:
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/06/assassins-creed-revelations-details-from-gi-hookblades-bom/
"In Revelations, you'll play as both 12th century stabber Altair and his 16th century ancestor Ezio..."
Ignoring the missing comma for the appellative, there is a major confusion of terminology here.
For those unfamiliar with the genealogy terms, 'ancestor' refers to a relative from a previous generation, while 'descendant' is one of a future generation. Analogues to these would be 'forefathers' and 'progeny,' respectively.
So the correct statement would be that you play as Altair and his descendant, Ezio.
Source:
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/06/assassins-creed-revelations-details-from-gi-hookblades-bom/
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