Anyone else bothered by the lack of proof-reading on GalNet News?

Zsokorad

Zsokorad
Update: I'm updating this original post because people seem to be replying without seeing the end of the discussion first. The writer(s) have gone through and updated multiple GalNet articles. Whether it was because of this thread or not is unknown, but regardless, I feel the issue has been resolved. For more details, fast-forward to this post and the one after it.

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There are ever-present typos, grammatical errors, run-on sentences, unnecessary or missing punctuation, and awkward phrasing in almost all of the in-game GalNet News articles. Having gone back and read GalNet newsletter articles from Beta about the Eranin civil war, these mistakes seem to not exist until the articles started appearing in the game itself.

Here are two examples where the writing has really bugged me...

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"Senator Denton Patreus announced today in a press release that the government of the impoverished Durius system has defaulted on the loan he gave to them back in 3294, and that he had given then 24 hours to make the overdue payment or action would be taken."
Click to expand...

  • Run-on sentence
  • Typo: "then 24 hours"
  • Awkward phrasing: "announced today in a press release that"
  • Passive Voice: "had given", "would be taken"
  • Unnecessary words: "gave to them", "back in 3294"
  • Repeated word use too close together: "he gave to", "he had given"
Quick re-write example:​

"In a press release today Senator Denton Patreus announced that the government of the impoverished Durius system has defaulted on the loan he gave them in 3294. He has granted them 24 hours to make the overdue payment or action will be taken."
Click to expand...

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"Local news reports show this not to be true. A whole family has been found dead, overcome by the noxious fumes from the burning of the ripe crop in their field tent, and the image of a burning warg (a deer-like creature with big eyes, probably imported as a pet by one of the settlers) running from a burning field, has spread through social media, especially within the Alliance, spreading hatred for Federal Forces."
Click to expand...

  • Run-on sentence
  • Awkward phrasing: "not to be true"
  • Passive Voice: "has been found"
  • Awkward phrasing: "A whole family [...] in their field tent"
  • Too much time spent away from the sentence: Explaining the warg
  • Repeated word use too close together: "burning of the", "burning warg", "burning field"
  • Unnecessary Punctuation: "field, has"
  • Repeated word use too close together: "spread through", "spreading hatred"
Quick re-write example:
​

"Local news reports show this to be false. An entire family was found dead, overcome by noxious fumes from the burning of the ripe crop in their field tent. Also, the image of a warg (an imported deer-like pet) on fire as it runs from a burning field has spread through social media, especially within the Alliance, igniting hatred for Federal Forces."
Click to expand...

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I know that the articles aren't essential to gameplay, but this tends to make the story feel rushed and really knocks me out of the immersion of reading articles written by a professional galactic news network. I'm not asking for the writers to earn Pulitzer Prizes, but at least proof-read things before they are posted to the game.

Does this bother anyone else or am I just nitpicking?
 
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culyerscott

C
I agree, however, as other parts of the game have been rushed to release without much checking this is no surprise. I know that, in my job, if I rushed out a public communication with so many errors without first checking over it about 3 times, then getting it cross checked, i would be sacked!
 

silence please

S
I agree. Although I'm too far away to even take any active interest in the "storyline" happenings I do like reading "the news" whenever I dock at a station and it has struck me as a bit rushed in the writing department. Maybe they should just take their time with them, they're not that many news reports so just reflect on them a bit more before publishing; perhaps read a few RL news sources with articles on similar subjects and imitate the writing style.
 

gamecat

gamecat
To be honest I'm not that impressed with the writing. It seems childish in places and has numerous gramatical errors and little punctuation.
 
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rootsrat

Volunteer Moderator
rootsrat
Even though I'm not native English speaker, I usually pay attention to the grammar and the style of writing in games, unless a game drags me in so badly that I stop paying attention. Elite: Dangerous is definitely the latter case :)

Well spotted errors though!
 

rootsrat

Volunteer Moderator
rootsrat
DraigUK said:
Yes it annoys me too. Ticket them though and they get fixed pretty quick.
Click to expand...

In my opinion there is no point in fixing outdated GalNet news, as they're already out there. The words have been spoken typed. Better to make sure the new ones are spot on.
 

gamecat

gamecat
rootsrat said:
Even though I'm not native English speaker, I usually pay attention to the grammar and the style of writing in games, unless a game drags me in so badly that I stop paying attention. Elite: Dangerous is definitely the latter case :)

Well spotted errors though!
Click to expand...

For me ED lacks flavour at the moment and these poorly written news articles do not help with the immersion. Why don't the ED team employ an illustrator to bring these articles and missions to life a bit? Plain text is terribly dull.
 

Hexen

Hexen
I can barely write in English so my reading skill not much better. I just see no difference to tell the truth. But I guess to a native reader those news might look like a disaster so valid point I guess.
 

CATPAIN KIRK

CATPAIN KIRK
It's probably an imperial thing - I'm pretty sure the main station in Summerland is supposed to be spelt "Henry O´Hare´s Hangar", not "Hanger"...

;)
 

UKJay

UKJay
At the risk of nit picking even further (and please don't see this as any criticism!):

Zsokorad said:
There are ever-present typos, grammatical errors, run-on sentences, unnecessary or missing punctuation, and awkward phrasing in almost all of the in-game GalNet News articles. Having gone back and read GalNet newsletter articles from Beta about the Eranin civil war, these mistakes seem to not exist until the articles started appearing in the game itself.

Here are two examples where the writing has really bugged me...

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  • Run-on sentence - this is not a run on sentence. It is a complex sentence that has used an ordinate conjunction as a stylistic alternative to a subordinate conjunction. This is common in newspaper and news reposting discourses as it creates a linear narrative of what has occurred.
  • Typo: "then 24 hours"
  • Awkward phrasing: "announced today in a press release that - again, this is quite common in news reporting where the adverbial phrase is not fronted but appears after the verb phrase (a perfectly grammatical position I might add) to change the focus of the clause onto the subject (Senator Patreus). It should, for completeness, have been bracketed with commas.
  • Passive Voice: "had given", "would be taken" - first example is not passive voice as the verb subject (agent) is present, it is the past-perfect simple tense (and active voice). The second is passive voice but this is very typical of news reporting as well as politician's speech use (to avoid either agency, or responsibility)
  • Unnecessary words: "gave to them", "back in 3294" - the use of additional phrasal information in news reporting is very common as it suits the requirements of reporting discourse
  • Repeated word use too close together: "he gave to", "he had given" -I cannot see the problem with the repeated verb use as it refers to two distinct objects (the "loan" and "24 hours").
Quick re-write example:​



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  • Run-on sentence
  • Awkward phrasing: "not to be true"
  • Passive Voice: "has been found"
  • Awkward phrasing: "A whole family [...] in their field tent"
  • Too much time spent away from the sentence: Explaining the warg
  • Repeated word use too close together: "burning of the", "burning warg", "burning field"
  • Unnecessary Punctuation: "field, has"
  • Repeated word use too close together: "spread through", "spreading hatred"
Quick re-write example:
​
Click to expand...
I could make much the same comments on the second set too. Again, please do not take this as a criticism. I have spent too long examining newspaper corpora for grammar and stylistics work on my MA recently.

Personally, I think the style is really accurate. The occasional typo is not really an issue - you only have to look at the subtitles on news sites today to see absolute corkers!

article-2560022-1B7CA79700000578-114_634x434.jpg
 

Dixie

D
Hey,

'Bothered' would be a bit of an overstatement to describe how I feel about the texts in the game, but I certainly see room for improvement.

I have seen many instances of grammatical errors and words having been left out, which in just a shame in my opinion.

Also, but this really comes down to personal likes/dislikes, I think the style of writing could be better. I specifically remember that text that said something along the lines of "if it isnt cool in the federation than you know it really is NOT cool" - the use of the word 'cool' and the idea that that would appeal to me was just ...offputting really.

Cheers,
 

Poseidal

Poseidal
Some of the system descriptions have some typos. I notice Cemiess says that Aisling's Palce is there — I assume that is meant to be Palace? Vequess has an odd character before the quite, which I think might be the dash not being handled correctly.
 

Muthax

M
I don't find it as annoying as when I see the same kind of errors in the REAL press (and that happens a lot) but yeah they could improve it
 

deMangler

deMangler
I ticketed some text errors in beta and was told it was "as intended", I haven't bothered since but I do wish they at least did some basic proof-reading. Journalistic styling would be good too...
I am optimistic that all this stuff will improve - I mean look at the production values of the game visually and the sound.... Just extending those values to other aspects of the game will solve a lot.
 
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