2.27 - http://eightyearsinazeroth.blogspot.com/2013/02/2-27.html
… hang on I’ve read this one before and made corrections that aren’t on here still…ah yes from the email preview you sent:
to come up with every excuse in the book the justify their terrible
Change “the” after “book” to “to”
players that possessed a greater set of raid skills than the average guildy.
Sounds a bit clunky, how about “players that possessed a set of raid skills greater than the average guildy.”
allowing various clicks to play in their reindeer games
clicks = cliques, you had it correct in the second paragraph title but missed this one I think.
causing me to look elsewhere for the divine inspiration.
I think this works better without “the”
a group of players that were were long time veterans of DoD
Remove a “were”
two enhancement shaman brothers with a tendency to lash out at other players that rubbed them the wrong way.
A bit redundant since you used this metaphor in the previous sentence, maybe changed to “…lash out at other players that irritated them.”
With every new story that arrive in my inbox
“arrived”
It came as no surprise, then, that when I logged on to my forums a few days later that I was greeted to a scathing exit post, denouncing my mishandling of guild leadership.
I dunno about you but when I read “It came as no surprise, then, that when I logged…” I don’t pause in-between surprise and then, YMMV.
Now beyond this point are suggestions concerning style more than anything else, feel free to ignore if you want (except for actually changing the “–” to the correct “—”):
It is a bit “–” heavy, yeah? I dunno if this is just a typing thing but the consecutive hyphen (which I thought was a double hyphen but a double hyphen actually gets confused with an equals sign, both which are different) should be an “Em dash” (Alt+0151 — on the numpad). Turns out a consecutive hyphen isn’t used for anything and I think Word typically corrects this to an em dash or maybe not. More info here:
The goal was ultimately not to change the feel of the guild – we sold ourselves as the family-friendly option on Deathwing-US.
Not very dramatic, could change the em dash to “as” and it would work better.
after the fallout of a poorly thought-through guild merger – if one could call it that.
This one I think works ok.
What surprised me is that it started to come from players I least expected it to – players that possessed a greater set of raid skills than the average guildy.
Again, not very dramatic, could probably go with a semicolon here along with the correction above. This goes under Boney’s previous suggestion of this being an independent/dependent clause so you can leave this as is.
During an evening of play at the start of November, one such player – a warrior named Lhaktar – who had been a perpetual repeat offender, derailing into bouts of unprofessionalism in his dealings with other players, finally pushed me too far.
There is a lot of information here in this sentence, all of it good but it needs to be broken up some I believe, otherwise you would end up using parthensis, maybe an em dash or two and some commas. How about “During an evening of play at the start of November, a Warrior named Lhaktar, finally pushed me too far. This player had been a repeat offender who derailed into bouts of unprofessionalism in his dealings with other players.”
I removed him from the guild as a warning – a timeout of sorts – with the expectation that this would be a wake-up call, and he would get his act together.
Again there isn’t much drama, you could get away with commas here. Works fine with extra info, leave as is.
It was easy to pick out the players that were vocal in their defiance – they were dealt with the quickest.
Comma or semicolon is probably best here.
We enjoyed the benefit – albeit a temporary one – from a passionate guy by the name of Corivs.]
This one I think works ok also. It seems that with the em dash it can be used like the “comma extra info comma” or parenthesis.
She had a much subtler way of taking out her aggression on players that disgusted her – she simply stopped healing them in raids.
This one works ok as well.
No sense in stirring the pot, letting things get out of control – especially with the guild leader on a bender to kick people out of the guild for any little infraction.
Normally I would say this also works but since you used it just two sentences ago, maybe split this up: “No sense in stirring the pot and letting things get out of control. Especially with the guild leader on a bender to kick people out of the guild for any little infraction.” Nevermind, I think this works ok.
So in heated moments of aggression when players took to guild chat to whine about the loss of loot – as Lhaktar did that fateful evening – I was fed up with it, and clicked the the big red button that ejected him from our roster.
This one works ok as with the others just change to em dash.
keeping it out of the public eye – and my own.
This one also works, oh the drama.
And Fal had no back-up crew in her clique – she was already surrounded with like-minded folks that had troubles of their own with the guild-law.
I think this one works…did you find a new way to disguise your commas, Shatner?
Her only ace-in-the-hole was Annihilation, but unlike Dalans’ strategy of simply dousing the fire, Annihilation’s days of mediation were behind him – and had no intention of solving Fal’s problems.
While there is drama here I think it works better as two sentences. Full stop at “him” and change the second part to “He had no intention of solving Fal’s problems.”
As was his in his nature, Anni knew people – and he knew that there was no teaching her diplomacy with baddies.
Remove the em dash.
So, my only other option was reduce her rotations – and diminish her negativity on the raid team.
Ok now you are just trying to use them. You can remove the dashes here completely as the “and” functions just fine.
A few days after I fired a warning shot over the bow for Lhaktar to get his attitude and behavior together, he was gone for good – off to start a guild of his own: Triple Zero.
This one works well.
The post radiated so much vitriol that I deleted it in haste – out of disgust.
I don’t think the em dash works here, maybe “The post radiated so much vitriol [awesome word btw] that I deleted it hastily, out of disgust.”
I can only hypothesize that her fury centered around Lhaktar’s treatment, along with other friends in her clique – while players like Shimerice were allowed to run free with more discreet contempt.
I think a comma works better here instead of the em dash.
What I can say for sure is that – for Falnerashe – the story would not end here.
This one works ok.
On this day in the not-so-distant future, it would remain to be seen if people, in fact, can change – or if they remain shackled like slaves to their life-long hatreds and grudges.
This would probably do well as two sentences. There’s nothing wrong with starting a sentence with a preposition either so I’d go with a full stop at “change” and just capitalize “or” and leave the rest as-is.
I…uhh think that covers everything. Note: for anyone wondering wtf? like I was, this was from a previewed email and before @Hanzo started most of the rewrites and where the em dash came out in full force.