I know that this subject has been run into the fucking ground, but it still hasn't gone away: internet syntax. Today I was looking at the most recent Honorable Mention for the World of Warcraft comic contest, and I was in shock of how many rules of punctuation it broke. If I were running the contest, anyone who submitted anything below would be automatically disqualified and would have their WoW account locked and deleted and their friends' and guildmates' accounts deleted as well if I was in anything but a stellar mood:
Disqualifier one: The spaced out exclamation mark. We've all seen it. It's where people put a space between the last word in the sentence and the exclamation mark ! What is the fucking point of that? You're trying to make a point, but the one I'm getting isn't the one you want. Namely, that you're a functioning retard. All that does is distract me because it's poor form.
Disqualifier two: Too many fucking exclamation marks. You know, where people use more than one!!! Calm the fuck down, no sentence requires more than one exclamation mark. Every time I see more than one exclamation mark, I picture an annoying blonde dunce who's laughing her ass off and fucking screaming every sentence like she's a fucking child. Grow the fuck up, learn moderation.
True story: Once my stepmother wrote a letter to our landlord. It was to thank them for letting us rent the house or something, and she wanted me to proofread it. She said something about the fruit trees being nice, and deemed it necessary to denote it with three exclamation marks. They still haven't found her body.
Disqualifier three: Improper apostrophe use. APOSTROPHES HAVE NEVER, EVER, EVER BEEN USED TO MAKE A WORD PLURAL. EVER. Why do people KEEP MAKING THAT FUCKING MISTAKE? NEVER in school were you taught to use an apostrophe to make a word plural. You were taught that it was used for either posession or contractions.
Incorrect: "Those're mom's turnip's!"
Not wrong: "Those're mom's turnips!"
What's the difference? "Turnips" doesn't have an apostrophe in it, and it never fucking will. Come on, people. I got a 17 on the English section of the ACT. If I can get this bullshit, you should be able to as well.
Disqualifier four: A stupid sense of humor. I know my comics are lame sometimes, but that's why I don't submit them. A lot of the jokes that won the contest are fucking lame and most sound like the brainchild of a nine-year-old. Case in point: one comic features a night elf whore saying some gibberish, and a Troll nearby who doesn't understand her is completely ga-ga over her because she's supposedly hot. Firstly, night elves are not hot. Secondly, give me a fucking break. I don't give a shit about women being objectified and that whole spiel, it's just that it doesn't make for good humor. It's pathetic. I'm fucking tired of all these THAT GUY IS OGGLING THE HOT BABE LOL jokes, make them go away.
Disqualifier five: Ugly art. A few people out there hate my art style, but that's ok. I think we can all agree that some of the comics that won the contest are fucking tragedies that would make Da Vinci impotent. For example, there was a comic that looked like a mix between Veggietales and bad Flash gradients. The result? A massacre. It hurt to look at it. Why did it win? Blizzard should not be obligated to run poorly-drawn comics. If all you can draw is stick figures, maybe you shouldn't be drawing comics. Call me crazy. At least get someone who has some fucking talent to draw it for you.
Disqualifier six: Poor font choice. Leaf through your local newspaper's comics section and look at the comics. Do any of them use Times New Roman as the font? No? THEN QUIT USING IT. I used to use Verdana because it's probably my favorite font of all time, but now I use Comic Sans MS because I'm not a complete idiot with no sense of design. Comics are an art form, treat them like one.
By the way, "fuck" appeared on this page 15 times.
