READY - Fixes a metric pantload of spelling errors, bad grammar, incorrect punctuation, and malapropisms in monsters.json. #3992
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…nctuation, and malapropisms. Seriously, who tried to take a thesaurus to the monster file? They really should leave those long words to the folks who know what they mean.
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I'll concede that junglefowl is one word, however the comma to which you are referring is neither awkward nor unnecessary. In this particular instance, both hooved and grazing are adjectives, and should be separated by a comma. And what forgotten period are you referring to? |
I agree but it was in the original description. |
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Do you mean 'flexuous' by any chance? At any rate, they're certainly both, flexuous and flexible, what with being lumpy things made out of otherworldly matter that doesn't necessarily abide by the laws of our reality. To be blunt, 'clawform' isn't a word. That's why I changed it. |
To be honesty, Mi-go should be capitalized, since it's a proper noun (no different from saying 'American' or 'English') that denotes a race of sentient creatures.
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Now I'm typoing up my commit text heehee. Well, the important part is that the contents of the commits are correct! |
| @@ -632,7 +632,7 @@ | |||
| "special_freq":0, | |||
| "death_function":"NORMAL", | |||
| "special_attack":"NONE", | |||
| "description":"A hooved grazing mammal with a mane of hair, a sweeping tail, and powerful looking muscles", | |||
| "description":"A hooved, grazing mammal with a mane of hair, a sweeping tail, and powerful looking muscles", | |||
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Horse description's period is still missing.
And the comma is awkward because the adjectives do not describe the noun in the same way. A horse isn't "grazing and hooved" unless we are describing a horse in the act of grazing, and the context suggests that we are describing a horse as a grazing animal that also has hooves.
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Actually, this brings up a good question. Here is the semi-fragmentary sentence structure: I prefer complete sentences and thoughts, but I'm willing to go either way, even it undoes a good number of my changes so far. Is there a set style guide for this type of thing? |
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I stand corrected on the comma.
I've tried to avoid changing the phrasing itself as much as possible, except in cases where the original phrasing made no sense. |
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Hmm. Well, how about this, for example: Now, just add one minor change: "The long-tailed weasel is a small but ubiquitous predator whose range extends across the continent. It forms its den in small burrows, preferring to occupy the nesting holes of its prey." Doesn't the second one read much better? |
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My goal was to shoot down the most egregious grammatical wonkiness. I agree that it does read better, but I'd like to move past this and get back to adding content. If you'd like to clean up the odd phrasings, you totally should! |
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Oh totally, I'd love to be picking words apart and reassembling them for everybody, but I wanted to get a general feel for how much picking I should do. I have no idea who did the original writing and so I don't want to overwrite too much, but I would like things to be a bit cleaner. |
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These files have been picked over and modified by so many folks, it's hard to tell. I'm sure that general cleanup would be greatly appreciated. |
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@pitrdevries, I don't think you need to worry about stepping on other people's toes. It's an open collaboration, and it seems like you've already got a pretty substantial edit underway. If someone takes issue with something, they'll probably say so.
I tried doing that too, and the result was a mishmash of almost-styles. Many of those descriptions got undone and reverted to the older state, but some of the older ones are just plain bad, and they weren't proofread before they got merged back in. I appreciate the effort this took, and it's a huge improvement, but I think the descriptions will still need some love in the future. The narrative tone is all over the place, jumping from whimsical to informative to esoteric, without much sense or direction. It's possible to blend those elements together into a compelling voice, but that will take time and effort. |
| @@ -1017,7 +1017,7 @@ | |||
| "special_freq":0, | |||
| "death_function":"NORMAL", | |||
| "special_attack":"NONE", | |||
| "description":"The Northern short-tailed shrew, an insectvorous mammal that resembles a cross between a mouse and a mole. Notably for a mammal, it has a venomous bite, which can prove painful for humans.", | |||
| "description":"The Northern short-tailed shrew, an insectovorous mammal that resembles a cross between a mouse and a mole. Notably for a mammal, it has a venomous bite, which can prove painful for humans.", | |||
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Naros caught this error too: but he put 'insectivorous' which looks like the correct spelling. Thanks Naros!
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Two more that Naros got that I couldn't put a line note on: Line 3728: "A man-sized wormish..." Wormish doesn't appear to be a word; "worm-like" was a suggested replacement. Line 4756: "A mutant, landfaring..." Landfaring doesn't appear to be a word; "terrestrial" was a suggested replacement. |
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Wormish is a word according to Webster (and Scrabble!), but it's a pretty archaic choice, and I doubt it was ever widely considered proper. Oxford actually gives wormlike without a hyphen, so there's that. |
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Cheers pitr. :) |
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I approve of the tone-change-less modifications being made here, and I think it's an important clean up. We should probably set up a general ticket for trying to discuss where we want to go with regards to tone and description changes in the future, as it's a bit off topic here. Since I disagree with much of what has been said and want to weigh in, I'll create that if needed after work today. But more on topic - Since these are just outright fixes or bits of polish with no large scale changes, I'll probably look into reviewing and merging this tonight. |
| @@ -4753,7 +4753,7 @@ | |||
| "special_freq":0, | |||
| "death_function":"NORMAL", | |||
| "special_attack":"NONE", | |||
| "description":"A mutant, landfaring variety of the signal crayfish, this massive crustacean resembles a humongous lobster.", | |||
| "description":"A mutant, terrestrial variety of the signal crayfish, this massive crustacean resembles a humongous lobster.", | |||
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The only thing wrong with land-faring is that it might have needed a dash! Terrestrial makes the crayfish sounds a lot less like a scourge of the sea (pond? stream?) that has taken to land to continue its reign of terror!
Also last item on the list, and it all looks pretty good to me.
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Well it could be argued that since they live on Earth, they're automatically terrestrial.
But to be more to the point, crayfish split their time between land and water - but they live most of their time on the land, building burrows in the mud and such.
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All changes okayed - just needs to be merge-able now. |
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See #4163 for tangent discussion. |
I started by trying to fix all the it's/its confusion and realized that there was a LOT more than that to fix.
I've not bothered to change most of the instances of really abnormal phrasing and the spots where it trips all over itself trying to use all the thesaurus words that it possibly can; this primarily focuses on making it so that those of us who have an inner Grammar Nazi don't tear all of our hair out when we read the monsters' descriptions.