Off-line

[Celsith.2753]

I don't care what Webster says, it's really annoying.  Change it back.

[naiasonod.9265]

8 hours ago, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

I heard back from the editing team. 

 

Short version from them:

They did it as part of some editing clean-up (clean up? cleanup? I don't even know at this point) to make it grammatically correct. 

 

Long version from them:

GRAMMAR CONTROVERSY AT ARENANET

 

The editing team struggled mightily with the weighty decision to add a hyphen in the term "off-line." After a heated debate that included no small amount of name-calling, tears, and even a little bloodshed (from an accidental, self-inflicted paper cut), they came to the not-entirely-unanimous decision that matching the spelling prescribed by Merriam-Webster outweighed the aesthetics and character-limit savings of the nonhyphenated spelling. One valued member of the team is contemplating leaving their highly sought-after Assistant to the Junior Editor position over the entire affair. The harmony of the editing team has been forever upset, but it's a worthy sacrifice in the name of proper grammar.

 

Nobody understands just how passionate we nerds get about these sorts of things.

Nobody except other passionate nerds, anyway.

[Michram.6853]

People overreacting over a single -

 

It's more grammatically correct than offline, so deal with it. 🤓

[CathShadow.9507]

I appreciate changes, and attempts to improve quality, like this. That said, as I understand, Off-line is American English, Offline is British

Edited May 13, 2021 by CathShadow.9507

[Pooktress.2805]

ArenaNet, please listen to the majority. Change it back.

[TwinFrozr.6214]

Don't fix what ain't broken. Change WxP Enrichment to WXP Enrichment instead.

[Nemo.1523]

We're not all connected to the internet via telephone lines anymore, so "Off-line" doesn't even make sense in the modern world ..
The worst part for me is actually the capitalization of the "Off" ...
"is now Off-line"
"is now online" 

[Danikat.8537]

26 minutes ago, Nemo.1523 said:

We're not all connected to the internet via telephone lines anymore, so "Off-line" doesn't even make sense in the modern world ..
The worst part for me is actually the capitalization of the "Off" ...
"is now Off-line"
"is now online" 

But in that sense it's like save icons still being a picture of a floppy disc. By the time it was inaccurate it was so widely accepted that it would be strange (and a lot of hassle) to change it. 

 

What would you say instead, that wouldn't need to be explained to people seeing the message for the first time?

 

(The one that does bother me is that the main drive on a PC is still the C drive, because part of the reason it's stuck around so long is lazy programming which assumes the operating system and other key software will be on the C drive instead of checking, which means even though renaming drives is easy renaming that one can be an absolute pain.)

[Friday.7864]

Player opinion matters, a dictionary does not, at least when it comes to games.

In this case the majority has spoken: Bring offline back please.

You know how communities have slang? Yeah, how about we keep using offline instead of off-line? You can explain it like that.

Do you plan to bring grammar check to chat next?
Don't do unnecessary things and stop wasting your time please 🙂

[broken.1943]

14 hours ago, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

I heard back from the editing team. 

 

Short version from them:

They did it as part of some editing clean-up (clean up? cleanup? I don't even know at this point) to make it grammatically correct. 

 

Long version from them:

GRAMMAR CONTROVERSY AT ARENANET

 

The editing team struggled mightily with the weighty decision to add a hyphen in the term "off-line." After a heated debate that included no small amount of name-calling, tears, and even a little bloodshed (from an accidental, self-inflicted paper cut), they came to the not-entirely-unanimous decision that matching the spelling prescribed by Merriam-Webster outweighed the aesthetics and character-limit savings of the nonhyphenated spelling. One valued member of the team is contemplating leaving their highly sought-after Assistant to the Junior Editor position over the entire affair. The harmony of the editing team has been forever upset, but it's a worthy sacrifice in the name of proper grammar.

Surely this is a joke, right? "It's a worthy sacrifice in the name of proper grammar"
1. It's using random capitalization in the middle of a sentence.
2. It's an american dictionary published in 1974 where they don't seem to update their words.
3. It's almost been 10 years since release and you guys change that NOW?

 

If you wanna be so inclusive, give us an option to change the game to English (UK) then, since you guys seem to enjoy making changes so long after people have gotten used to a certain spelling and not everyone is American.

 

Also, according to Google trends less than 1% uses the hyphened spelling of "offline" in this day and age.
Absolutely unreal.

Edited May 13, 2021 by broken.1943

[zealex.9410]

15 hours ago, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

I heard back from the editing team. 

 

Short version from them:

They did it as part of some editing clean-up (clean up? cleanup? I don't even know at this point) to make it grammatically correct. 

 

Long version from them:

GRAMMAR CONTROVERSY AT ARENANET

 

The editing team struggled mightily with the weighty decision to add a hyphen in the term "off-line." After a heated debate that included no small amount of name-calling, tears, and even a little bloodshed (from an accidental, self-inflicted paper cut), they came to the not-entirely-unanimous decision that matching the spelling prescribed by Merriam-Webster outweighed the aesthetics and character-limit savings of the nonhyphenated spelling. One valued member of the team is contemplating leaving their highly sought-after Assistant to the Junior Editor position over the entire affair. The harmony of the editing team has been forever upset, but it's a worthy sacrifice in the name of proper grammar.

The fanfic was a fun read but please change it back.

[Thaumanovic.9238]

6 hours ago, CathShadow.9507 said:

I appreciate changes, and attempts to improve quality, like this. That said, as I understand, Off-line is American English, Offline is British

 

Yes, but no. It's the other way around:

Quote

Other references, including The Canadian Press Stylebook, Information Technology Vocabulary (published by the Canadian Standards Association), and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO/IEC WD1 2382-01, 1998-06), confirm the use of the solid words online and offline. However, on-line and off-line have also been standardized by ISO for Great Britain.

 

[Friday.7864]

Yup, for anyone on the EU server they should be gramatically correct and change it to british english aka offline.

Don't care if they decide to torture their American players with off-line tho 🤷‍♂️

 

Looking for a british english dict leads to this: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/offline

Edited May 13, 2021 by Friday.7864

[Tukaram.8256]

Honestly if not pointed out, in this thread, I would never have noticed the change.

 

The etymology is standard English usage. Two words become hyphenated, then eventually one word.  Off-line and offline are both correct (and it is not an "American" thing).  But there should be consistency in use. So, if the hyphen is used in off-line, it should be used in online as well.  Mixing use generally is frowned upon.

 

I am old, so I still tend to use the hyphen in off-line, on-line, e-mail, but I find I am leaning towards not using the hyphen sometimes... but I still occasionally try to add 2 spaces after a period (full stop). ha ha  😎

Edited May 13, 2021 by Tukaram.8256

[kharmin.7683]

3 hours ago, Pooktress.2805 said:

ArenaNet, please listen to the majority. Change it back.

What majority?  The forums represent too small of a sampling of the entire player base for any threads to be considered the majority opinion of all players.

[Asum.4960]

15 hours ago, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

I heard back from the editing team. 

 

Short version from them:

They did it as part of some editing clean-up (clean up? cleanup? I don't even know at this point) to make it grammatically correct. 

 

Long version from them:

GRAMMAR CONTROVERSY AT ARENANET

 

The editing team struggled mightily with the weighty decision to add a hyphen in the term "off-line." After a heated debate that included no small amount of name-calling, tears, and even a little bloodshed (from an accidental, self-inflicted paper cut), they came to the not-entirely-unanimous decision that matching the spelling prescribed by Merriam-Webster outweighed the aesthetics and character-limit savings of the nonhyphenated spelling. One valued member of the team is contemplating leaving their highly sought-after Assistant to the Junior Editor position over the entire affair. The harmony of the editing team has been forever upset, but it's a worthy sacrifice in the name of proper grammar.

Petition to buy the editing team Fidget-Spinners, Yarn-Balls and Play-Dough in order to distract them from messing up perfectly fine common use industry standard terms for outdated pre-internet technically grammatically correct dictionary versions that are an eye-sore.

Edited May 13, 2021 by Asum.4960

[Danikat.8537]

8 minutes ago, Tukaram.8256 said:

Honestly if not pointed out, in this thread, I would never have noticed the change.

 

The etymology is standard English usage. Two words become hyphenated, then eventually one word.  Off-line and offline are both correct (and it is not an "American" thing).  But there should be consistency in use. So, if the hyphen is used in off-line, it should be used in online as well.  Mixing use generally is frowned upon.

 

I am old, so I still tend to use the hyphen in off-line, on-line, e-mail, but I find I am leaning towards not using the hyphen sometimes... but I still occasionally try to add 2 spaces after a period (full stop). ha ha  😎

Having just finished editing a newsletter for work I'd honestly take 2 spaces after a full stop over the 3, 4 or even 5 some people use. (My best guess is some people finish a sentence and then just tap the space bar while thinking of the next one.)

 

I agree that both can be used (and as someone who frequently deals with both British and American English I don't think either is more common in one than the other) and I absolutely agree that the important thing is to be consistent. If Off-line is staying then the other message needs to be changed to use On-line.

 

1 minute ago, kharmin.7683 said:

What majority?  The forums represent too small of a sampling of the entire player base for any threads to be considered the majority opinion of all players.

The forum is a minority of players, and does tend to be those who spend a lot of time on GW2 so that can produce bias in some cases. For example if someone put up a poll about how many living world episodes you own I expect the results would show most people own many or all of them, and that would not be representative of all GW2 players.

 

But it seems highly unlikely the forum population would be biased on this issue. I can't see any reason why spending more time on GW2 than the average player would lead to preferring one spelling over the other.

 

Besides I'm sure you're aware how rare it is to get this level of consensus even among people on the forum. Even if we disregard the wider population it's surprising there aren't more people supporting the change, if only for the sake of disagreeing with the way the conversation seems to be going.

[Friday.7864]

29 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

What majority?  The forums represent too small of a sampling of the entire player base for any threads to be considered the majority opinion of all players.

True, true. 
But it's also true that opinions don't matter unless they are voiced. 

The people who care about it have left their feedback and are, for the most part, in agreement.

Edited May 13, 2021 by Friday.7864

[Ayrilana.1396]

20 minutes ago, Friday.7864 said:

True, true. 
But it's also true that opinions don't matter unless they are voiced. 

The people who care about it have left their feedback and are, for the most part, in agreement.

Everyone’s opinion matters; not just the ones who choose to voice them. 
 

How many unique posters in this thread do you think there are who want it changed back?  How many players actively play this game?  Should those players in this thread really dictate how things “should” be as if they somehow represent all of the players who do not use the forums?

[Friday.7864]

2 minutes ago, Ayrilana.1396 said:

Everyone’s opinion matters; not just the ones who choose to voice them. 
 

How many unique posters in this thread do you think there are who want it changed back?  How many players actively play this game?  Should those players in this thread really dictate how things “should” be as if they somehow represent all of the players who do not use the forums?

Nonsense. 
Does everyone's opinion matter when there's presidential elections even though they didn't vote? No.
If you want your opinion to matter you vote/tell people about it. End of discussion.

[Ayrilana.1396]

4 minutes ago, Friday.7864 said:

Nonsense. 
Does everyone's opinion matter when there's presidential elections even though they didn't vote? No.
If you want your opinion to matter you vote/tell people about it. End of discussion.

This isn’t an election. 

[Zaxares.5419]

As a former style and copy editor, I can see why the Editing team came to their decision, although like many here I find the new look a bit jarring and, in all honesty, probably unnecessary. This is like the "email vs e-mail" argument; technically "email" is incorrect, but so many people use it that it's become an accepted spelling of the word in common conversation. (For the record, I still spell it "e-mail" myself. :P

[Ayrilana.1396]

1 minute ago, Siryx.5124 said:

 

I never use the forums. I don't have time to write 7000 Posts. Yet this matter sufficiently triggered me (and everyone else i have talked to ingame since) to make this post. There's a bunch of people who created an account to post in this thread. And you have the ignorance to imply your opinion is the popular one. Seems youre just out of touch with the game too, maybe more ingame and less forum time would make you realize.

Where did I state that mine was the popular one? Please don’t make things up. 
 

Actually, come to think of it, where did I state my opinion on it?

Edited May 13, 2021 by Ayrilana.1396

[kharmin.7683]

4 minutes ago, Siryx.5124 said:

 

I never use the forums. I don't have time to write 7000 Posts. Yet this matter sufficiently triggered me (and everyone else i have talked to ingame since) to make this post. There's a bunch of people who created an account to post in this thread. And you have the ignorance to imply your opinion is the popular one. Seems youre just out of touch with the game too, maybe more ingame and less forum time would make you realize.

Yeah, insulting your opponent is a great way to win your argument.  Maybe the very small minority who post on the forums are out of touch?  You have no factual evidence to support either side of the discussion.  No one here does.  So, to imply that this request is made by a majority is a false premise to even start a conversation.

[Friday.7864]

6 minutes ago, Ayrilana.1396 said:

This isn’t an election. 

Same principle. 
I'll refrain from using examples or posting anymore as some of you seem to be taking things too literally and derailing the thread.

Bye.