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The first and most important part of roleplaying is grammar. In this section, I'll cover the basic rules of making a sentence, and this alone should help with many people's RP quality. If you've had a bunch of VERY good English teachers, you most likely don't need this. I'm breaking the sentence down to its parts to explain it, and if you have an excellent grasp already, please just glance over it or move on. This is for those of us who haven't had good instruction in sentence formation.

If anything in here is unclear, please post and let me know. I'd be happy to help you out and explain it more fully.

Part One: Parts of a Sentence

A sentence is a complete thought. It says one thing and conveys a very clear and simple message. When we read a sentence, we can ask several questions:

-What happened?
-Who did the action?
-Whom did that action happen to?
-Where did it happen?
-When did it happen?
-Why did it happen?

The different parts of the sentence answer these questions. No matter how short a sentence is, it will always answer the first two questions: what happened and who did it. These are the two ESSENTIAL parts of a sentence, and they even have names: the predicate (what happened) and the subject (who did it). But those are fancy, unnecessary words, and we're just looking for results. So, let us call them by simpler names: the verb and the noun.

The Verb

The verb is the action in the sentence. It tells what happened. 'Run', 'jump', 'type,' 'talk', and 'is' are all different verbs, though there are many more, too many for me to list. In order for a sentence to be complete, it has to have some action in it. It has to have a verb.

For example: Amyla types.

'Types' is the verb in the sentence. It tells what happened, what the action was.

The Noun

The other essential part of the sentence is the subject, which in most cases is a noun. A noun is a person, place, thing, plant, animal. It is something that.... is: a rock, a tree, a fruit basket, Amyla, and so on and so forth. There must be a noun in the sentence to tell who is doing the action.

For example: Amyla types.

Amyla is the subject in the sentence, and it is a noun. It tells who did the action. 'Amyla' did the action.

Some nouns are what we call 'proper nouns.' Those are nouns that are names of specific people or places, such as 'Amyla' or 'Washington D.C.' or 'Gaia.' All other nouns are just generally referred to as 'nouns.' The only difference is that the first letter of a proper noun must be capitalized in every case. That is why Amyla is capitalized but rock is not.

Putting It Together

In summation of the above parts, a sentence must have a noun and a verb. Without them, it isn't a sentence. Any sentence you write should be able to be reduced down to those two basic parts: the subject and the verb.

**As a special note, when RPing, full sentences may not always be necessary. Short phrases may be more effective in some cases. People don't always speak in full sentences, so dialogue can often be:

"How are you?"

"Just peachy."

And this is acceptable. However, the majority of RP should be done with full and complete sentences. It just makes it easier to understand.

Punctuation and Capitalization

Ahhh, the bane of every student's existence, punctuation is. Don't worry; I am not going to hammer you with rules and regulations. We are just going to cover the very basics in order to make this easy. We are covering periods (which would be the little dot), exclamation points (!), and question marks (?) for now. Everything else can wait.

Periods

A period signals the end of the sentence. If you look on your keyboard, it is probably located underneath the 'L' key, on a key with the '>' symbol. It's a dot. Isn't that special??

Anyway, the period is the punctuation mark that says, "STOP! THIS IS THE END OF A COMPLETE THOUGHT!" It lets us know that your sentence is finished and separates each sentence from the next. It basically means that it chops one big block of writing into short, readable chunks. Quite handy, it is.

An example of how we use the period would be:

Amyla types.

See the period on the end? That means, 'Sentence done. Please move on."

Exclamation Points

This is perhaps my least favorite of all punctuation marks, just because it is so overused. An exclamation mark is located on the same key as the 1 on your keyboard, up above where your left hand should go. This signals the end of your sentence as well. It basically performs the same job as the period except it adds the extra note of, "This sentence is exciting and full of action! PAY ATTENTION!" Simple, eh?

Question Marks

The punctuation that we use for a question is called (ooooh, this is a toughie!) a question mark. It looks like this:

?

And it is on the key right next to the period. Most of the necessary punctuation is on that area of the keyboard, minus the exclamation point, of course.

We use the question mark in the same way as a period: to end the sentence. The only difference is that it signals that the sentence is a question. 'Who are you?' is one example. I bet you can come up with a million of them, such as 'Why the heck are we going over this?'

Capitalization

There are two basic reasons for capitalizing a letter. Reason one is that the word is a proper noun such as Amyla, Nurse Faithful, Alaska, Gaia. But we went over that, didn't we? Reason two is that the word is the first word in a sentence. You ALWAYS capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence, regardless of what part of speech it is.

Examples:

The rock flew through the air.

Amyla types.

Blue herons fly.

Run-on Sentences

This is the warning that I feel I must tack on to the end of this lesson. Run-on sentences are what can destroy your RP posts. It basically means that you take two or more sentences and squish them together without ending, such as:

Amyla went to the store to buy a loaf of bread she found the bread and paid for it and then she walked home she stopped at the mailbox to pick up her mail.

Anybody else have a headache from reading that?

Really, that is the simplest thing in the world to fix. Separate it out according to which are complete thoughts, and you have your sentences. The sentences should divide out as the following:

Amyla went to the store to buy a loaf of bread. She found the bread and paid for it, and then she walked home. She stopped at the mailbox to pick up her mail.

See how much easier that is to read, and it honestly took me only about an extra two seconds to add in the punctuation and the capital letters.



These exercises are designed to give you practice in the skills listed above. These are not required, but if you do them in the thread, I will be around here to help you out and work with you. And who knows? Maybe I can reward people who put forth the effort to try.

**Note: my above examples are not to be used for the exercises. That's cheating! wink

1. Name five nouns.

2. Name five verbs.

3. Write a short subject-verb sentence like I did above. Put the noun into italics and underline the verb.

4. Copy the paragraph below. Put each subject in italics and underline each verb. (Hint: each sentence has only one subject and one verb, just like a normal sentence, which means one word in italics and one underlined).

The boy sat on his favorite bench in the park, watching the birds. They were so funny. One bird kept stealing food from another. They squaked and made lots of noise.

5. Write two sentences: one using an exclamation point and one using a question mark.

6. Separate the following paragraph into sentences and use punctuation and capital letters where needed. You can change my punctuation and capital letters if you want.

I had a bad day at school my teacher yelled at me and i got an F on a test but i studied lots how did i get an F its not fair.

Ahhh, just when you thought you had escaped my awful grammatical lectures, I am throwing yet another one at you. Wonderful, isn't it? Fear not, this lesson is probably much more fun than the first one. In this one, we get to add descriptions and play with word order. So, let's get started!

Adjectives

Adjectives are descriptive words. They tell us details about nouns. Your English teacher would probably give you some highly-educated thing about how 'adjectives modify nouns', but we'll just settle for saying that adjectives describe nouns. Simple enough, right?

Adjectives can describe just about anything: size, number, color, possession, temperament. We'll look over some of these things plus a few more.

The Articles

The articles are among the easiest of adjectives. There are three: a, an, the. You use these to note which one specific noun you are referring to or mean it as a general statement. Is it 'a' fish? Or is it 'the' fish?

As a note about 'a' and 'an', you use 'a' when the next word begins with a consonant. So, it would be 'a fish.' You use 'an' when the next word begins with a vowel, such as 'an ambiguous fish.' Understand me so far? Good! Let's move on!

Gender

Unlike Romance languages, which have different genders for each adjectives, our adjectives generally do not change for gender. 'Blue' is 'blue' for boys and girls. Of course, we generally don't use 'handsome' to describe a girl or 'pretty' to describe a boy, but it's not like we have separate adjectives for girls and boys. It's all the same! Yay!

Size, Color, Number

These three make up the majority of the adjectives we use, and they are all pretty self-explanatory. Size (how big something is), color (need I say more?), and number (how many there are) are very, very basic.

For size, words like big, small, tiny, short, heavy, light, ginormous ("Does that mean really big or really, really small?" Haha for 'House' fans!) all fall under this category. An example would be: the small child. Further examples could be: the tall girl, the large dog, the tiny mouse.

Color is even more basic. 'The blue toy' and 'a green fish' are both examples of color adjectives.

Number is fairly easy as well. 'Six frogs' and 'eleven toenails' are two very random examples.

Adjectives are not limited to one-per-noun. You can use many at once, such as 'the big green fish' or 'six small blue toys.' Mix and match all you want, but remember that adjectives usually come before the noun, except in the case listed below.

'Is' and All Its Forms

Remember when we were discussing verbs? We said that verbs tell the action. Well, this verb is a verb of being. It tells what state or condition a noun is in. For example, we use 'is' to say things like 'the table is old.' We could say 'the old table', but that isn't a sentence is it? Using 'is' makes it a full and complete sentence.

'Is' has a few forms. I will list them below for you to look over and remember. Though our verbs usually don't have different forms for each different subject (unlike the Romance languages, for those of you taking Spanish, French, Latin, Italian, or Romanian), 'is' is a verb who makes exceptions to the rule.

I am. (Past tense: I was.)

We are. (Past tense: we were.)

You are. (Past tense: you were.)

They are. (Past tense: they were.)

She is. (Past tense: she was.)

He is. (Past tense: he was.)

It is. (Past tense: it was.)

Simple enough right? Most sentences you use in RPing will use the past tense, so it would be good to store these away for future use. They will come in handy; trust me.

Possession

This lesson was the bane of my existence when I was in elementary school. I hated possessive adjectives with a passion. The good news is that once you learn them, they stick with you. Great how that works, eh?

Possessive adjectives show who owns something, whom it belongs to. I have a laptop, therefore, it is my laptop. You have a computer, therefore, it is your computer.

Possessive pronouns:

I: my (my laptop) or mine* (That laptop is mine.)

You: your (your laptop) or yours* (That laptop is yours.)

We: our (our laptop) or ours* (That laptop is ours.)

They: their (their laptop) or theirs* (That laptop is theirs.)

He: his (his laptop)

She: her (her laptop) or hers* (That laptop is hers.)

It: its (its laptop)

*Notice how five of them have a second form. This is the form you use when using a being verb like 'is.' These forms are NOT used directly next to a noun. 'Mine laptop' just sounds very... wrong.

Did you notice that there are no apostrophes? Possessive pronouns like this don't use apostrophes. Now we get into the other nouns, and these ones do use apostrophes. (If you're looking for the apostrophe (') on your keyboard, it should be located one key to the right of your right little finger, the same key that you find quotation/dialogue marks on, incidentally.)

'This is the girl's laptop.'

Did you see how I formed the possessive? I added a apostrophe and an s on the end. It went from 'girl' to 'girl's'. This holds true with most everything. The exception would be plural nouns such as 'girls'. To add an apostrophe and an s on there would like rather cluttered. So, for those things, we just add an apostrophe to make it: girls'.

Other Things

There are many other things we could go into about adjectives, and I've just barely touched on them. However, for the sake of time and your sanity (oh, and mine, for that matter), we will leave the rest be for now.

Adverbs

Adverbs describe (Surprise, surprise!) verbs. They usually tell how something happened. Easy enough, eh? In general, when you see a word ending in 'ly', it is generally an adverb. 'Really', 'continuously', 'slowly', 'quickly', 'barely'.... they're all adverbs!

'She walked quickly.'

'She' is the subject of the sentence. 'Walked' is the verb, telling the action that she did. 'She walked.' 'Quickly' describes 'walked.' How did she walk? She walked 'quickly.'

Again, I could go much more in-depth with this, but I think you get the idea. I will note, though, that unlike adjectives, we generally don't use a lot of adverbs to go with one verb. "Six small blue fish" works well, but "She barely walked really quickly and easily" is a bit much, don't you agree?

Adjective and Adverb Phrases and Clauses

Okay, this is where things get tricky. Sometimes, phrases can be used to describe nouns and verbs. These are adjective and adverb clauses. I will give a detailed view of this if someone requests it, but if not, I'll just settle for the short version.

Adjective Clauses

There are two types of adjective clauses: defining and non-defining. Defining clauses are those that have to be included for us to understand the meaning of a sentence. For example:

The baby that was born today was Kujaku and Senai's.

Notice how 'that was born today' is describing 'baby'. Without it, we couldn't be quite sure which baby the sentence was talking about. That falls under 'defining clause.' Also note how there are no commas. No commas means that the phrase is important and should be noticed. (**Also, 'that' is usually the relative pronoun that we use for defining clauses.)

Non-defining clauses can be removed from the sentence without changing it. They just give extra, non-essential information. For example:

Nurse Faithful, who is the Clinic's mule, is online.

Notice how I put that in commas? That means that it isn't an essential part of the sentence, and we can remove it without really changing the sentence's meaning. I mean, we all know who Nurse Faithful is now. Note also how I used 'who'. We generally don't use 'that' with non-defining clauses. Those are reserved for defining clauses, such as those above.

There are four relative pronouns to use with adjective clauses:

That- used for humans, animals, and objects when they are subjects or objects (which we will discuss in an upcoming lesson)
Ex. I like the art that you drew.

Who- used for humans when they are subjects
Ex. Amyla, who is an RP addict, love to spend time on Gaia.

Whom- used for humans when they are objects
Ex. Amyla, whom Sky does not understand, is an RP addict.

Which- used for animals and things as subjects or objects
Ex. Amyla has two dogs which like to beg for treats.

Notice how 'that' and 'whom' have nouns after them but 'who' and 'which' don't. Keep this in mind when RPing and writing papers for school. You will be amazed at how it helps.

Adverb Phrases

Adverb phrases are multiple-word blurbs that describe a verb. They can tell when, where, why, and under what circumstances a thing occurred. 'I went to the mall on Monday' is an example. The subject is 'I.' The verb is 'went.' 'To the mall' is an adverb phrase; it tells us where the action happened. 'On Monday' is also an adverb phrase, telling us when it happened.

Adverb Clauses

Okay, these things are a royal pain in the buttocks. They answer the same basic questions as above, except they expand on it. They are basically adverb phrases with a subject, a verb, and what's called a subordinating conjunction. Is your head spinning yet? Mine is. Let's be very brief with this.

Adverb clauses are dependent clauses. Like sentences, they have a subject and a verb, but because they start with subordinating conjunctions (because, if, wherever, after, until, while... to name a few), they can not stand alone. Sentences are independent clauses; they have a subject and a verb and can stand alone and make sense, such as 'She types.'

Now, if we were to take 'She types' and tack 'because' on the beginning of it, we would have an adverb clause. 'Because she types' is not a sentence. It is a dependent clause. We read it and wonder, 'Because she types... what? What happens?!' For that reason, it can not stand alone.

Am I making sense? Just to make sure we're understanding it, I'll put some examples below. The adverb clauses are in italics.

Because I forgot to clean my room, my mother grounded me for a week.
(It answers the question 'why?'. Why did my mother ground me for a week? She did so 'because I forgot to clean my room.'')

Are we going to the movies after school is out?
(It answers the question 'when?'.)

We can't take a test as we were out sick for three days.
(It answers the question 'why?'.)



1. Name two size, two color, and two number adjectives to describe 'dragon.'

2. Think of two adverbs to describe how you get your homework done.

3. 'She has a laptop.' Use an adjective and change that phrase to show possession.

4. Write a paragraph and describe your bedroom or computer room to me. Give me adjectives and possessives!

5. Now I want you to write a short, five-sentence paragraph about one of your RP characters. You must include one adjective clause and at least two adverb clauses, and the paragraph must make sense.

Now that I've shoved out all of the really, really basic stuff, the stuff that is making my RP buddies' heads hurt, it is time to get into the fun stuff. By this, I mean the forming of an actual RP post. Most of us use third person past tense. Do you know what that is? No? Okay, let's dive into the details!

Third Person

Third person is pretty easy to grasp. It means we are speaking/writing about other people and looking in from an outside position. If we use 'I', we're speaking in the first person because we are right in on the action. Third person uses the pronouns 'he', 'she', 'it' and 'they' and all of their possessive forms. For example:

'I catch the ball' is first person. 'I' suggests that the writer (and reader) is right in on the action.

'He catches the ball' is third person. 'He' suggests that the action is done by another person, and we are distanced from it.

We usually use third person because it distinguishes the roleplayer or writer from the characters themselves. Too often I have seen people get into fights about 'Well, your character yelled at my character!' That's why we use third person, so we make sure that the other person knows that it's just in-character fighting. The roleplayers themselves don't disagree; it's just the characters fighting. And THAT is the beauty of third-person!

If you still are unclear about third-person writing, take a peek at the RPs going on in this guild, or think about the novels you read. Many novels are written in the third person. How to tell? If they use the word 'I' a lot outside of dialogue, it is generally first person. 'He', 'she', 'it', and 'they' are used outside of dialogue for the third person.

Past Tense

Past tense can sometimes be a little more difficult, but we'll manage, right? It just means that the action happened... in the past! It was done and is not being done.

For example:

'I catch the ball' is the present tense. It is happening NOW!

'I caught the ball' is the past tense. It happened BEFORE!

Most of use past tense just because it is easier. Less confusing, easier to read. Again, look through a novel. Notice how everything is 'said' instead of 'says' and 'jumped' instead of 'jumps'? It's all past tense!

Combining Them

Third person plus past tense equals.... the most popular RPing style!

And when I say 'popular', I don't mean 'cool' (though it is cool). I mean the most widely-accepted and used form of RP. Bring it on!

So, we said 'he' is one of the pronouns for third person, right? Well, we can use those nice things called 'nouns' for third person too.

'The boy catches the ball' is the third person.

'He catches the the ball' is third person.

'He caught the ball' is third person past tense.

GASP!

See what I've done? I changed the verb, and voila! It is third person past tense!

We have now combined them!



Remember that character profile you wrote for the last exercise? I want you to take that character and write an RP post for them in the third-person past tense. It must be at least five sentences in length. Longer is good, but quality over quantity!

Dunh dunh duuuuuunh.... the dreaded journal! For some people, this is the bane of their existence, but it often comes with an RP-required pet. You just have to have 'em. My aim here is to make them a little less of a drag. I personally enjoy journal posts. Let's hope the rest of you learn to enjoy them as well.

Why? What is the point?!

Journal posts are intended to go between RPs with other people. They fill in the blanks, let us know what is going on at home with a pet/person/child/character, and give us some insight as to what that pet/person/child/character is thinking. They aren't meant to give you fits (which they can produce in some people). They just let us (and most especially the shop owner) see how your kid/pet is progressing. Journals can be used to hold many things, but I have generally found four types of posts to be found in a journal after the first page (which we will discuss in the next lesson or so): journal/diary entries, solo RPs, RPs with others, and shopowner updates.

Journal/Diary Entries

These are one of my favorites. These posts are like diary entries, either by your kid or by their guardian or parent, or sometimes even by a sibling! They let us see what is going on in the different characters' minds. For example, let's say in an RP, your kid just met another teen about their age. They could write a diary entry entailing who they met and what they were like, and so on and so forth. It lets us see what they are thinking, the things we wouldn't know if the journal simply had a bunch of RPs.

When I do journal/diary entries, I usually put the 'Document' background on the post. It just lets me know when I read back through the journal later, that 'HEY, this is a diary post! That means we're getting inside Aiodhan's head!'. But that's just my personal preference.

Solo RPs

These are another great favorite of mine. This is like a roleplay, but it is only done between your own characters. I do this for birth RPs (like Aryana and Evie's births; see their journals). I often do this to introduce new adopted kids to the household as well. It can be more fun that just a diary post, because in a solo RP, you can have a lot more characters out and running around.

Multi-person RPs

These are the more common kinds of RP. These RPs go on between your characters and another person's characters. They can either be done in the journal itself or in another thread. If done in another thread, you can either make a post and say "RP with So-and-so's characters at the beach" while adding a link, or you can transcribe (post by quotes) the entire RP into the journal in one or more posts. Those can take forever to transcribe, though, so see what the shopowner requires. Some require you to transcribe; some just want links.

Shopowner Updates

These sort of updates are posted by the shopowner. These include things like plot updates, growths, quests, etc. Some shopowners don't make these in journals, but some like to post updates like these. Just be aware of them!

Some Things to Note!

Some things to keep in mind include the fact that regardless of which posts you make, proper grammar and spelling is a must. Yes, if you are doing a post from a child's perspective, I expect that you will purposely misspell things. But we should be able to understand it to know what is going on with that character.

Also, journals are a GREAT place to develop plot-type stuff. For example, if your character is a wanted criminal, the journal is a great place to note things like, "I think someone might have been following me today" or "someone broke into my house while I was gone". Journals are made to help you track your kid/pet/whatever's progress and to keep the shopowner updated on what is up with the character. Make full use of this wonderful tool!




To make you do an example of each one of these would be cruel, not to mention kind of pointless. Therefore, I'm asking you to provide a link to your journal. You get full credit for these if you have one of each (besides the shpoowner update) present in your journal.