One of my biggest grips about the Magisphere is the lack of writing ability. Articles are published all the time with simple spelling mistakes that make me wonder if major magic sites have an editing process. William Spaniel of brainburst.com even has a section of his column dedicated to Mike Flores’s abuse of the capitol letter. These abuses of language could stem from the diverse geographic and cultural origin of authors. Yet, even Frank Karsten, a dutchman?, does a pretty good job over at wizards.com.
I think that a lot of site owners and administrators could do a far better job of making sure content on the frontpage of the site meets at some sort elementary standard.
I’d like you to look at the 8th paragraph of an article about the Texas Guildmages. That paragraph has two clear topics inside of it.
1. This history and description of David Williams.
2. A story of his competitive success.
This violates a basic rule of writing that I still remember from grade school. One paragraph, one idea. It is my opinion that brainbust.com is already enough hard to read. It is a huge chore to read those squished lines of text with almost zero whitespace. Huge paragraphs like that don’t give my eyes a chance to rest. I frequently get lost in that swirling sandstorm of sentences.
Wordiness that bloats the authors ideas can’t be blamed on the site design alone.
“Williams was penalized for having marked cards in his deck. Apparently three Accumulated Knowledge cards had curiously matching bent corners. ”
Shouldn’t that be: “Williams was penalized for having three Accumulated Knowledge cards with curiously matching bent corners.“?
20 words in the original statement vs. 14 in my single sentence. 25% reduction, same idea.
Bah, what do I know? I barely passed english class in highschool… I see comment after comment of “WOW, great article, well written” on stuff I just want to mutilate with red pens marks. I wonder if the magisphere actually sees these literary blunders or does and resists the urge to post about them. D- for effort, if this is the case.
