Monthly Archives: August 2010

On Convention: The Brief Edition

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Let’s say, for a minute, that ‘X’ is some non-harmful action or method or behaviour or idea.

Person 1: “I want to do X”
Person 2: “But, but! You can’t!”
1: “Why not?”
2: “Because!”
1: “Give me a better reason.”
2: “Because that’s not the way it’s done!”
1: “Who says? Maybe ‘the way it’s done’ could use an upgrade.”
2: “But that’s the way we’ve always done it!”
1: “But with the advance of new technology and new generations with new ideas about society and culture, maybe what you ‘used to do’ just isn’t relevant anymore, have you thought of that?” 
2: “But anything new just… just won’t work!”
1: “Why not? It might work better than what we already have.”
2: “It will fail! People will hate it! People will destroy you with criticism! And when it fails, I will be right here to tell you ‘I told you so’!”
1: “You’re just afraid of change. Can’t you see that this is a better way?”
2: “There are only so many ways of doing things, and they were ALL done before! The current way was PROVEN to be the best!”
1: “Yes, by previous generations in a much different society than ours. The world has changed since then. So I’m going to do X anyway.”
2: “…I guess I can’t convince you. You’ll come to your senses eventually, probably after you fail, and realize that you can’t just do X on a whim! Just remember that I warned you.”

Does anyone besides me see how freaking irritating Person 2 is? We stick these arbitrary limitations on ourselves as a society and as individuals, and then wonder why nothing changes? We wonder why governments are corrupt, why our heathcare system is failing (I’m Canadian), why people continue to devour Big Macs and mass-produced fried chicken and cigarettes? We know our systems are broken, but we’re so reluctant to change that we excuse it all by saying “that’s the way it is” or “that’s the way it’s always been” or (the worst) “it’s a fact of life that [governments are corrupt, mass healthcare will never work, people want cheap, easy food, people smoke, etc.]. And if we take these things as facts, anyone else who does anything different (or tries to change anything) is considered an idiot, a hippy, a rebel, or foolish (or all four).

Conventions change from generation to generation. But when these conventions persist as fact, they make society increasingly narrow-minded and rigid. Not to mention, they can land us in some pretty deep s**t (case in point: the government).

On Apostrophe Usage

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(Alternate title: The Spam I Receive Has Better Grammar Than My Corporate Workplace)

This really frustrates me. How many times do I visit an otherwise professional website, only to find that whoever wrote the copy for it had no concept of when to use (and not to use) apostrophes? Specifically, the ‘apostrophe ‘s” combination. People in general know that contractions use apostrophes– I rarely see something like ‘doesnt’ or ‘cant’– but they seem to have no understanding of when apostrophes are used in conjunction with the letter ‘s’ at the end of the word. In my opinion, there’s really nothing as unprofessional as this. The worst part? It’s getting worse, not better! It’s becoming more and more widespread. Are people just not being taught grammar in school anymore?

Here’s a real example, pulled from my employer’s corporate intranet:

Misused Apostrophe

 

 

Do you see the mistake? There should not be an apostrophe in ‘participants’. By comparison, the spam I received in my email inbox this morning not only had perfect grammar (in an attempt to bypass my spam filters, no doubt), it also correctly used words like ‘inconceivably’. Why can random spammers write better English than professional writers?

So for those of you who didn’t catch the mistake above, here is the condensed version of when to use ‘apostrophe ‘s”:

1) DO use it to indicate possession– i.e: Jim’s car, the participant’s boredom, the Jones’ house (be careful of this last one– since the name already contains an ‘s’, the apostrophe is placed after it, not before).
* The exceptions to this are the generic singular nouns (he, she, it); when forming the possessive with these, there is no apostrophe (his bike, her closet, its colour (a wall, for example)).  

2) DO use it to indicate a contraction with the generic singular nouns discussed above– i.e: it’s (it is) warm outside, he’s (he is) a nice person, she’s (she is) out of town. In slang, you can also use other nouns like this to form contractions, but this is rather confusing in written English (i.e: my mom’s (mom is) out shopping), and is more widely used when speaking.

3) DO NOT use it just because a word is plural. ‘Participants’, above, is plural, but in the context of the sentence, there is nothing that indicates a possessive, and a contraction would not make sense (‘on providing participant is with greater self awareness’…?), so an apostrophe should not be used.

 4) DO NOT use it because you’re just unsure. There are plenty of online and offline resources available to you to give you the rules of grammar– there’s (there is) no excuse not to look it up ESPECIALLY if you work for a large company.

 So there’s my rant for the day. Miss Grammar Freak, at your service.

On the DIG London Website

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I received a link to this interactive gaming conference this morning, and while it actually looks quite interesting (and I may consider going), they’ve got one of the worst website designs I’ve seen in a while. Take a look at this (visit the website for the full-size version):

I realize that the audience for this conference probably doesn’t care about website design, but they WILL care when they realize that the information from last year still has not been replaced and they can’t find what they’re looking for. Game design is still design– there’s really no excuse for this website to look like this. So, in the interest of fairness, let’s analyze the good and the bad… maybe there’s some good stuff underneath the 2000-esque design.

 

The Good:
- Navigation-based breadcrumb trail– you always know which page you’re currently on, as the link in the navigation is bolded and has a ‘>>’ symbol behind it.

- Text-based, simple navigation

- White (or light) content background makes body text very readable

- Use of XHTML, jQuery.

- Modern, clean banner up top.

- Centred layout, fits 1024 x 768 resolution without horizontal scrolling

The Bad (partial list):
- Tables-based layout (use divs and CSS– tables are for tabular data, and are a huge pain anyway).

- Very inconsistent alignment (pick one and stick with it!).

- Inconsistent fonts/font colours/line spacing/etc. (same as above).

- Use of images for text headers (like the ‘Some of our great speakers…’ text. Use plain text– it’s more SEO-friendly).

- The big banner has the new dates of the conference, but the ‘Speakers’ and ‘Sessions’ links still show the old content from last year (take this down, and maybe put it in an ‘Archives’ section, otherwise it’s very confusing).

- Black background on the Twitter feed widget is very hard on the eyes… and what’s with that neon green text? (Use consistent colours across the website).

- EXTREMELY crowded and cluttered home page– there is no focal point, and the information in the middle is lost amid all of the surrounding logos/images/stuff (clean it up! Those logos do not need to be so big, and do not need to enclose the content like a sandwich).

- The email and print symbols look like they could have been pulled from an old DOS system… which works for some, but not for a gaming conference website. (And the alt text on the email symbol includes the word ‘eMail’… who still capitalizes the ‘m’ in email?! This is 2010, not 1999). Speaking of… why is there a link to email right next to the ‘Contact Us’ link? They don’t both need to be there.

- The image which links to the blog in the left column gives no indication it is the site’s blog, other than the Blogger symbol (a text link in the navigation would be better)

- And why is the DIG logo different colours in different places? And who can read the ‘Thanks to our 2009 speakers!’ header-image without getting a headache? And why is ‘Keynote’ capitalized in some places and not others? And what’s with all of the dashed lines separating the columns (and why are they all different colours)? And… and… and…

Sigh. Maybe I’ll use this website as a case study, and mockup a version of what I would like it to look like. Or maybe I won’t be able to stare at it that long. Either way, hopefully DIG cleans up their website before the conference this November… I might be more inclined to attend if they do.