Off-line

[JustTrogdor.7892]

I'm a bit conflicted.   What does it mean for the state of the game when one of the hottest topics in months  is to hyphenate or not?  Maybe there just isn't much more to discuss these days and that's a good thing.   Or maybe it is a bad sign that there isn't much more to discuss?   Who knows?  But I find hyphen gate rather odd. 

 

P.S.  I've had a few drinks tonight and I'm fine with that.  Here is a 🥑 because it makes no sense being here.   

Edited May 16, 2021 by JustTrogdor.7892

[HotDelirium.7984]

BREATHE and let's all go back to the simpler times... of ponchos...... 😉 

[Psientist.6437]

I was writing today and typed the word footprint. I stopped mid-sentence. I saw the story of foot and print and realized there was a me before hyphen gate and a me after hyphen gate. 

[Psientist.6437]

Do we dare "incept" hyphen gate?

 

Hyphen-gate?

Hyphen gate?

[zch.3127]

22 hours ago, Yggranya.5201 said:

Truly an arbitrary "clean-up". I sure hope this is just a joke, because if it isn't, then the people complaining about it here have nothing on the editing teams nutjobs.

 

I'm guessing that what actually happened is that the writing staff recently agreed to always use the Merriam-Webster spelling everywhere (except proper nouns, presumably) to make sure that spellings would be consistent between writers. They probably didn't debate offline vs off-line specifically. At least, I hope they didn't.

[Infusion.7149]

12 minutes ago, zch.3127 said:

 

I'm guessing that what actually happened is that the writing staff recently agreed to always use the Merriam-Webster spelling everywhere (except proper nouns, presumably) to make sure that spellings would be consistent between writers. They probably didn't debate offline vs off-line specifically. At least, I hope they didn't.

Except this is the UI/UX we're talking about.

[Shikigami.4013]

This thread needs the TikTok "Nobody's gonna know"..."They're gonna know"..."How would they know?" sound played on loop while reading.

 

PS: Bring back offline

Edited May 16, 2021 by Shikigami.4013
typo

[Enduronex.4865]

Yeah, the "off-line" hyphen thing is obnoxious.  Bring back "offline," much easier.

 

Also, whatever happened to floating over a player in game and seeing their username?  That's clearly not a privacy issue since you can just add them to see their username or, in WvW, block them to see their username.

[Yggranya.5201]

On 5/15/2021 at 10:11 PM, TheBravery.9615 said:

Stop complaining and lets appreciate anet's hard work on making this happen.

 

Indeed, as long as they "work hard" and it's "free", you aren't allowed to point out pointless decisions. I'm sure you'd say the same if someone from anet shoved a cactus wrapped in nettles up your backside. Hey, it's totally free!

[Zok.4956]

On 5/13/2021 at 2:07 PM, Tukaram.8256 said:

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.

 

Yes, it evolved from "off the line" to "off-line" to "offline".  "off-line" is still correct, but "offline" is now the most common (since years) form. 

 

Funny thing: The german-language version of the client still uses the word "Offline".

 

[Atille.5047]

Not everything that is correct is aesthetically pleasing, and off-line thing really looks out of place and jarring, since I can't even recall a single game that cared about doing that. Just really looks odd for no good reason. 

[Linken.6345]

20 minutes ago, Atille.5047 said:

Not everything that is correct is aesthetically pleasing, and off-line thing really looks out of place and jarring, since I can't even recall a single game that cared about doing that. Just really looks odd for no good reason. 

It is an american thing just turn-off the information in your chat settings.

[Baron Oakley.1539]

On 5/15/2021 at 6:52 AM, synk.6907 said:

Language evolves. "Online" hyphenation used to be discussed as well, but you hardly see that usage anywhere anymore.

 

Heck, I think both were originally typed with spaces (on line, off line), but that quickly went away.

 

I realize it's not a dictionary, but Google's ngram viewer emphasizes the change in usage across publication.

 

 

Hyphen or no hyphen, just make them the same. That's really the issue I have with it, personally.

Completely nuts that the MW dictionary is 20+ years out of date on the usage of this word. Explains why most other dictionaries have adopted "offline" as the preferred spelling.

[Chaba.5410]

Hyphenating "offline" after years of usage without the hyphen is a form of prescriptivism.

 

It's a bug to make such a highly noticeable change from one written form of a word to an alternative written form of the same word for the sole purpose of aligning with a style guide or aligning with a change in a style guide years after launch.  The great length of time of using the original form "offline" established the communicative practices of the GW2 community's in-game sociolect.  Therefore "offline" should be considered the authoritative orthography of this lexeme within this self-contained linguistic system.  Making changes to well established conventions of a sociolect's lexicon can be seen by the members of that community as an attempt to correct it, as if it's an improper deviation.  This is why it's prescriptivist to make the spelling change years after launch and why the sociolect's community has commented extensively and negatively on the change.

Edited May 24, 2021 by Chaba.5410

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

If you know the community has commented extensively on this topic, why aren't you commenting in that thread?

You would also know it is not a bug. 

Edited May 24, 2021 by Inculpatus cedo.9234

[Darkwyrm.1802]

It's absolutely a bug and I will never not treat it as a bug.

[Chaba.5410]

5 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

If you know the community has commented extensively on this topic, why aren't you commenting in that thread?

You would also know it is not a bug. 

Because this thread, which my post got merged into, is not in the Bug section of the forum.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Exactly.  

[Chaba.5410]

11 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Hyphenating "offline" after years of usage without the hyphen is a form of prescriptivism.

 

It's a bug to make such a highly noticeable change from one written form of a word to an alternative written form of the same word for the sole purpose of aligning with a style guide or aligning with a change in a style guide years after launch.  The great length of time of using the original form "offline" established the communicative practices of the GW2 community's in-game sociolect.  Therefore "offline" should be considered the authoritative orthography of this lexeme within this self-contained linguistic system.  Making changes to well established conventions of a sociolect's lexicon can be seen by the members of that community as an attempt to correct it, as if it's an improper deviation.  This is why it's prescriptivist to make the spelling change years after launch and why the sociolect's community has commented extensively and negatively on the change.

Since my localization bug report was merged into the wrong forum, it's clear that ArenaNet is having difficulty understanding why the change is a mistake and therefore a bug.  (I encourage readers to utilize the in-game /bug feature to report this localization error.)

 

First, last night when I suggested the usage is almost a decade old, I was wrong.  The unhyphenated spelling of "offline" existed in the original Guild Wars game and continues to exist today.  So usage was established back in 2005, making the old spelling even more strongly the authoritative form.

 

To the point, working from a descriptive linguistic approach, all evidence of "correct" language usage is found within the language itself, not outside of it.  In the game's case, the English localization is a 15 year old visual sociolect of English (think social/in-group dialect).  All "correct" forms of the sociolect are contained within the sociolect and as understood by readers of the sociolect.  So changing from "offline" to "off-line" is a mistake in the usage of the sociolect just as changing "offline" to "logged out" would also be a mistake.

 

Will you also be adding in Tyrian characters that correct Elonians' language usage when they say "Ahai" instead of "Greetings"?

Edited May 24, 2021 by Chaba.5410

[Teratus.2859]

This another case of Americans trying to "redefine" or "fix" language?

You know there's a good reason it's called ENGLISH!! and not American right?
Lay off my language, it's not yours to "fix" America lol

[Chaba.5410]

2 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Exactly.  

But it is a bug because it's a mistake in usage and everyone here has noticed that mistake.  Even using the words "prescribed spelling" from a dictionary is evidence of prescriptivism.  Look, they're wrong and need to be educated as to why they're wrong.  I don't blame editors though.  I don't expect them to be sociolinguists.

 

It's also a great misunderstanding and misuse of the lexicographer's art if they interpret headwords as authoritative sources for sociolects.  Dictionaries are not gatekeepers of language.  They don't prescribe.  Lexicographers only seek to describe language, which is why you see sometimes criticism from laymen who misunderstand this concept when a dictionary adds neologisms.  It isn't the dictionary that added a word to the language, but speakers of that language that added the word.

 

A lemma, or citation form, is merely a method of indexing lexemes.  That's all.  Lexemes can even have multiple entries filed under different lemmata and cross-referenced with each other.  Any high quality expansive dictionary is also going to include multiple linguistic information about lexemes: semantics, orthography, morphophonemics, morphosyntax, lexical relations, dialectical usage, etc.  Just because the Merriam-Webster website lexicographers overlooked providing full information about the lexeme doesn't mean one spelling is incorrect.  Dictionaries are almost never complete but edit out a lot of linguistic information depending upon what kind of dictionary it is.  Correctness is determined always by users of a language.  The game's visual sociolect has 15 years of usage.

 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/how-to-be-a-reasonable-prescriptivist
"And how good is a usage and style guide that merely parrots rules with no careful consideration for the historical record of edited prose, or whether this rule does indeed produce clearer, cleaner writing?"

 

On 5/12/2021 at 1:56 PM, 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.

Edited May 24, 2021 by Chaba.5410

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Players may disagree with the Devs' intentional change to the game, but that doesn't make it a 'bug'. 

Bugs are unintentional. 

[Chaba.5410]

2 minutes ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Players may disagree with the Devs' intentional change to the game, but that doesn't make it a 'bug'. 

Bugs are unintentional. 

As I wrote, it's a bug because it's a mistake.  Are you trying to say mistakes are intentional?

[Jink Bonestealer.9274]

Honestly, it just looks sloppy and unprofessional, especially with that space before the hyphen.

[Sobx.1758]

On 5/24/2021 at 7:41 PM, Chaba.5410 said:

As I wrote, it's a bug because it's a mistake.  Are you trying to say mistakes are intentional?

It's a bad decision (which in itself is subjective), but that's not a bug.