Way to get girls (?!): the new column for the new Dragon.

[Vigilance]

The Paizo thread for the same thing is amazingly bitter, hostile and just plain weird, with the addition of bizarre conspiracy theory mutterings. And it starts off with another claim by someone who says that because English isn't his first language that he can't understand the column. If you can understand a D&D rulebook and understand the posts on a message board, then you can understand the column.

What do you expect.

They canceled the license for this?!?!? [/JeffB]

 

[pemerton]

I'd bet that half of college professors cannot define ribald or conflate.

Actually, I don't think they are perfectly normal.

<snip>

I have never before in my life seem the words "ribald" and "conflate." I could guess the meaning of "conflate" from the context, but "ribald" was a mystery to me.

I am a native English speaker in the UK. Amongst other media I have read, on average 2-3 books a week for the past 30+ years. I may have encountered 'ribald' once or twice, but have until now not encountered 'conflate'.

I am a college professor ("lecturer" is the word used by Australian to describe my position) and I am familiar with the words "ribald" and "conflate." "Ribald" doesn't come up all that often as a word in either my profession or personal life, but "conflate" is part of the vocabulary of any student of a literary discipline - I would expect all my undergraduates to understand an assertion such as "That argument conflates the two examples in an unhelpful way."

As to whether sentence fragments are acceptable prose - I have no objection to them!

 

[Vigilance]

As to whether sentence fragments are acceptable prose - I have no objection to them!

Well, as we all know, the mark of great writing is grammatical accuracy because Shakespeare...

Well, at least Chaucer...

Well at least we can all agree that contractions are the sign of a poor writer because Mark Twain...

Well certainly we can say the article must be badly written because of its poor sentence structure because James Joyce... :\

 

[fuindordm]

"I abjure thee, callow trodders on the verge!"

That was so Gygaxian it hurt. Bravo!

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Well, as we all know, the mark of great writing is grammatical accuracy because Shakespeare...

Well, at least Chaucer...

Well at least we can all agree that contractions are the sign of a poor writer because Mark Twain...

Well certainly we can say the article must be badly written because of its poor sentence structure because James Joyce... :\

But when compared to the groundbreaking literary forms in science/maths textbooks . . . you know . . .

 

[Hussar]

To be fair, conflate is a word I first ran into here on the En World boards. I can honestly say I've never seen it anywhere else.

 

[wedgeski]

And yes, Brownies (or even brownies for the informal) are young girls enjoying organised recreational and charitable activities – remember that 95.5% of the worlds population lives outside of the borders of the US.

I also live in the UK and understood all of the points you cited without batting en eyelid. I don't mean this as a personal dig at you... just to point out that your experience may not be the prevailing one outside the US.

And speaking of which, Wizards are a US company. Dragon is a US magazine. This article is steeped in vernacular *because it reflects the voice of its author*. Neither WotC nor the author are obliged to santise their output for people outside of the States. (And despite the fact that Firefox is trying to tell me I spelt it wrong, I will reinforce my point by maintaining the correct spelling of 'sanitise'. )

 

[Guild Goodknife]

I'm not a native speaker and i had no problems at all understanding the article. I thought it was a nice piece of nostalgia and an ok read. Nota deal maker for a DDI subscribtion, but it doesn't hurt. There's just one thing that stroke me as odd: One of the designers wrote in his blog that articles like that were supposed to bait new customers/gamers with the emphasis on the social aspect of gaming. Well, i think publishing such articles in a restricted area (you need an account) of your homepage isn't really the best way for accomplshing such things...

 

[Cadfan]

The only solution is an Equal Time rule. For every article by Shelly, we need one from an incomprehensible chav.

 

[Desdichado]

And speaking of which, Wizards are a US company. Dragon is a US magazine. This article is steeped in vernacular *because it reflects the voice of its author*. Neither WotC nor the author are obliged to santise their output for people outside of the States. (And despite the fact that Firefox is trying to tell me I spelt it wrong, I will reinforce my point by maintaining the correct spelling of 'sanitise'. )

Uh... maybe Firefox was trying to tell you that for some other reason entirely...