Adventures in Programmar
I first got introduced to this term from some super mean friends. Programmar is when programmers (me) try to write sentences. I had written close to 100 quests for Secondhand Lands, and the whole game was riddled with grammar errors, spelling mistakes, and typos. (Oh my!)
They berated me for a full five minutes until I felt pretty stupid for even claiming I spoke English. I had made A’s and B’s in English class. I didn’t think I was illiterate. After all, I had learned English in the best schools in Oklahoma, but to be honest I’m a horrible speller. One of my friends told me I had to hire her to fix my Programmar.Secondhand Lands was just entering Closed Beta at this point. I was getting a lot of complaints about grammar especially from the users that spoke English as a second language.
Now, I was feeling really down on myself. This is when my friend started to fix the programmar in all of my quests. After a few weeks, she had cleansed the quests from grammar errors. This is when she announced it’s time to spice up the quest text. Oh yeah, this is where it gets funny.
It turned out that my friend was pretty fluent at programmar herself. She was producing grammar errors, spelling mistakes and typos just like me. I was very concerned at first, but then it all came at me in a flash. When the brain is engaged in the creative process, all English checking goes to the wayside. I started to read back through my correspondences with English sticklers. Wow, even they had grammar errors, spelling mistakes, and typos. Probably none of this is a major revelation, but it goes to say that creative writers can’t check their own grammar AND editors should not write creatively.
These two actives are somehow mutually exclusive in the brain. I’m not saying this is correct all the time. There are probably some creative writers out there that can produce perfect English, but don’t count on it.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.