Skills Page Updates

[Jagid]

The guide says the ideal mood for charisma skill gains is happy, but the skill gain bar over my Sims glows when they are confident and practicing in the mirror, not when they are happy.

Minor spelling correction needed on the same page in the handiness skill info section. It reads: "Upgrade Objects throughout the home wiht the Handiness Skill." "With" needs fixed. Grammatically, the caps on "objects," "handiness," "skill," "furniture," "woodworking table," etc etc need dropped too, but alas that seems to be the style here. These words aren't proper names, branded products, acronyms, or otherwise in need of caps. 

I suspect, however, I am in a very small handful of people who care about caps and grammar so don't worry about it.  On the off chance I am not the only one, here's an easy online reference: http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/capital.asp

Thanks! 

[Carl]

Hahaha.. Ok yes, I do know most of the basics of grammar and use of capitals What I've done is perhaps gone a bit overboard with game terms. While they're not proper terms in the English language, some of them are written that way to indicate they are a major gameplay system.. but I'll confess I've gone a bit overboard with objects on that page in particular I'll try to work out some consistency in that so that it's more clear. You probably wouldn't have bothered to note me if some of those hadn't been capitalized, like Computer, Woodworking Table, etc. and I admit it's a bit disruptive to the reading process. While I realize the skills and emotions themselves are not proper terms (and will never be) in the English language, they will always be a major part of Sims 4 and I've taken to highlighting major gameplay systems in my guides via capitals. Many of those will get links to the related pages and not look as silly when that step is complete. Many pages didn't exist when I was writing the most important articles, so I've yet to go on a mass linking binge and get related articles tied together. I do get the message though and will cut back my use on these and avoid noting objects this way so that it's less disruptive. When it's every third word, it's safe to say I've overused the concept. So, thanks for bringing that up. There will be less of that on future pages, and I'll see where I can tone it down while I'm beautifying the new design.

As for the Skill gains - 'Very Happy' was found in the game code to be a major booster for Charisma, with Confident falling somewhat behind. Couldn't tell you why, but maybe they corrected it as I've not tested it since before the December patch. I originally figured Confident was the key Emotion for leveling that myself (it seems obvious) and we actually tested the two to compare them and found that Happy was the clear winner. I've put a note in my to-do list to check that before the relaunch.

After writing all those pages, my instinct is telling me to capitalize those words

[Jagid]

LOL!

It's not your fault. Look at the capitalization in any game you play. The people who invent any term have the common human failing of making their own concepts more important in their minds than other things and thereby habitually capitalizing them.

In plain English: They program us to do that since we are just imitating what we see in their games. 

Many times they also use it as a virtually corporately reinforced replacement for the proper use of dashes. As in the "you must tie together your descriptive adjectives with dashes" part of English grammar.

Examples:

• Incorrect and confusing: The brown hyper funny weirdo Sim's cowplant.
• Correct and clear: The brown hyper-funny weirdo Sim's cowplant.
• Incorrect and unintelligible unless studied for a few seconds: The let's go and get hammered now thing we want to do
• Correct and clear: The let's-go-and-get-hammered-now thing we want to do.
• The "what-should-my-coding-skills-do-with-this" sentence: Grow a super cool cow plant then write a book entitled my cow plant and me.
• The coder decides to treat in-game objects like they are countries or corporations (this we call "the wrong way"): Grow a super cool Cow Plant then write a book entitled My Cow Plant and I.[/i]
• The correct way: Grow a super-cool cow plant then write a book entitled "My Cow Plant and Me."

The coder figures he'll make it more clear that the actual in-game object is a "cow plant" by capitalizing it as though he named his Sim's first name "Cow" and last name "Plant." "Hi there," says the Sim, "my name is Cow Plant." You may note that I capitalize the word "Sim" every time; but I do it because it's a trademark and basically the primary concept behind the whole game.

Also, I apologize that I imply coders know neither grammar nor the proper use of the pronouns "I" and "me" in a sentence (yeah, that's right, it's not a typo but a barb against another pet peeve of mine  ). LOL. But really it's just about 90% of English speakers and writers I bet. I do not envy your quandary when it comes to the debate between choosing consistency with what gamers see in game or correct English.

I expected you'd ignore the grammar part and just fix "with." 

I figured I'd stick in a plug for grammar just for the heck of it. I'm pretty sure your ad hits won't suffer any which way you write them. Leet speak. Textinglish. Whatever. Your page rocks for Sims info!! Before I found it all those years ago I actually had to keep my own notes. Gross! Hahaha!!    And thanks for caring enough to accept comments. You da man. 

[Carl]

Well, I read it myself and just happened to agree that it's too much. I had some words that weren't even terms capitalized. I think that the summary-style writing there was causing my fingers to go for shift every other word because of the number of 'terms' in the sentences. Some qualify as typos because of that Anyway, your explanation post was pretty funny so thanks for the follow-up. When the new design is live, that page will have the 'wiht' corrected while also featuring 50% less capitalized words!!