Help with emoting

[catchall]

Be happy that English is grammatically simple enough to allow things like Arm's emote code to even exist.  This kind of code simply can't exist in a language like, say, Spanish -- or most languages, for that matter -- not without becoming many times more complicated.  It's surprising that we don't have more situations like this.  

What you are criticizing is not "behaviors," it's the inability of the code to account for all grammatical features of English.  It certainly doesn't stop there.  Pluralization code is imperfect and fails to account for some edge cases.  Should we avoid letting items with tricky plurals stack in groups of 2+?  A lot of the phrases players use in command emotes shouldn't be set off with commas when used as post-emotes.  Should we rule out all those emotes, impoverishing creative possibilities?

I'm also not sure that there's any meaningful correspondence with power-emoting.  I'm confident I can rephrase any # emote to be grammatically correct, whether it's a power-emote or not (there's a general-format replacement that will take care of this: "#player VERBs" => "#me sees !player VERB", assuming your PC saw the action you are referencing), but if a player is having a hard time coming up with one, I have absolutely no problem with "The tall, muscular man waves at you as you enters the room."  My powers of immersionz are just that strong.

[AmandaGreathouse]

I typically use parentheses to help in these cases, like:

The tall, muscular man waves at you as you enter(s) the room.

That's just me.

[Cutthroat]

What I do is think about what other players will see when I enter the emote, and type out the emote so that it appears grammatically correct for them.

Granted, I also type out pronouns referring to my PC (e.g., "emote rubs his stomach and pats his head" instead of "emote rubs ^me stomach and pats ^me head"). It tends to help when it comes to thinking about the correct format for everyone else.

[RogueGunslinger]

I just rephrase it until it makes sense on all ends. I've never really had trouble doing that. I only ever use ^, %, and !.

[BleakOne]

I'm lazy. I only use ~ and % most times, and just refer to myself as his or her. It looks odd on my end, but I know what I mean.

[LauraMars]

I'm with BleakOne, as I'm also guilty of never using ^me or %me or &me or any of those.  I just use her, herself, etc.  I know what I mean.

[AmandaGreathouse]

I never use (symbol)me anything. Since it forces your sdesc on you in third-person, I just use his/her where appropriate for the character, for the rest... honestly, it seems a bit alien to me that people who've been playing for a long time still need the emote code stuff up.


Ergo, here is my best cheat sheet. The lines with two symbols on them have 2 symbols because the first symbol will show the person's sdesc, the second in the row only shows gender pronouns (him/her, his/her, etc). The third is what the person targeted with the symbol in question sees, and the fourth shows what the room sees. I think it might be easier to take in when it's seen like that.

Sdesc                    Gender                        What the target of the emote sees                                     What the room sees
~             |              !                              - you                                                                                Sdesc| his/her
              @                                            - sdesc (to place your sdesc somewhere random in a sentence) | sdesc
%            |              ^                             - your                                                                               sdesc's | his/hers
              &                                             - yourself                                                                            himself/herself
=             |              +                             - yours                                                                              sdesc's | his/hers
               #                                            - you                                                                                      he/she

Edit to add the pound sign.

[Da Princess]

help emote

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help emotes

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