These are the do's and dont's of posting properly here on Sanguinus.org.

"But I like -my- style of posting! Why are you being so overbearing!"

It's not about controlling how you play, but about streamlining the game. Often times, you'll find yourself in a very large scene with several other players. If everybody uses common methods of denoting actions, and follows basic spelling and grammar rules, it's very much easier to follow. Imagine reading a book in which every other line is written in a new style, with different methods of stressing certain words, or denoting dialog. You wouldn't read more than a few pages before wondering what the hell the publisher was smoking, wouldn't you? The same logic applies here.

General Netiquette

Colours

Don't use them. Some people have the habit of changing the colour of their font for certain actions, or whispering, or anything else like that. Don't do it. Many players use different clients, or different colour schemes and confuses not only them, but also makes the logs difficult to read.

Net/Leet Speak

Never ever ever ever use this while in character. Even out of character it will put people off, and I guarantee you will be made fun of for it. It shows laziness, lack of self respect and many people associate low intelligence with internet shorthand. If you simply must use it out of character, prepare to take jokes about it. Do not, under any circumstances, use it while playing the game.

That means any of the following:

"u" replacing "you": What do u mean?
"r" replacing "are": r u gonna say hi?
"@" replacing "at": where is he @?
"lol" replacing laughing: "Hey, don't do that lol!" as opposed to "Hey, don't do that!" ::He laughs::

Or any other internet shorthand you can imagine. Don't use it, and never use emoticons in character. Nobody wants to see this. Tell us in actions you are smiling.

By the same token, we expect that every player displays a basic understanding of grammar and spelling. If you have trouble spelling, type your posts out first in Microsoft Word and use spell check. Always use periods, commas, exclamation points, capitalization, etc where they are needed. It makes it very difficult for the other players to read what you are typing without it, and further makes it hard to understand the flow of the sentence, where your character pauses in speech, how he says things, and his or her tone.

Speaking Out of Character

First of all, we have an entire channel dedicated to telling us about your day, making fart jokes and general tomfoolery. That is #ooc. If you need to say something out of character, try to keep it in the proper channel. Posting out of character in the middle of a scene removes other players from the drama of the scene, and also adds to confusion. In the event that you need to post out-of-character commentary outside of #ooc or private messages...

Do: (( Put your comments in two parenthesis. ))

Do Not: ( Use one set. ) Use other types of brackets <<like any of these>> {or these}.