RMC (Rate My Check)

[fleurdyleurse]

approved by Jellicent; art by Bummer

​

Hi there, and welcome to RMC! Let me explain what this is:
In RMC, AM checkers can post their best AM check(s), and members of the GP team will rate their checks and give them suggestions. Much like the Grammar Dojo, this thread aims to improve the quality of AM checkers, allowing them to get into the GP team with ease. GP checkers can also post here for suggestions.

This is the criteria:
Readability: How readable are your checks? This is marked upon 5.
Subjective Changes: Do you make many subjective changes? This is marked upon 20.
Accuracy: How accurate are your checks? This is marked upon 30.
Misc.: Other things. This is marked upon 5.
All of this will be marked upon 60.

If you get above 55 marks, your checks should be quite good. However, if you are weak in a certain part of checking, here are some tips:
Readability: This is really this easiest part of a check. Just don't use hard to read colors.
Subjective Changes: Try not to make subjective changes unless they are needed to make the sentence flow better.
Accuracy: Always check the Spelling and Grammar standards when unsure of whether something is correct. Alternatively, go to #grammar on IRC to ask questions whenever needed.
Misc.: n/a

SCALES:
Excellent: This amcheck is of extremely high quality. It was very easy to read, did not unnecessarily change the author's voice, tone, or diction. It made subjective changes that improved flow. Nearly every grammatical change was correct. There are little to no punctuation errors. Almost no errors were missed in the check.
Good: This amcheck is of high quality. It was quite easy to read, and did not unnecessarily change the author's voice, tone, or diction. It made some subjective changes that did not improve flow. There were some punctuation errors. Some errors were missed in the check.
Fair: This amcheck is of average quality. It was easy to read, but it unnecessarily changed the author's voice, tone, or diction. It made quite a few subjective changes that did not improve flow. Quite a number of errors were missed.
Poor: This amcheck is of poor quality. It was hard to read and unnecessarily changed the author's voice, tone, or diction. It made many subjective changes that did not improve flow. A numerous amount of errors were missed.

Useful Smogon links:

• Spelling and Grammar Standards
• Analysis Format
  
• Check Like the Prose: A Guide to G/P
• Check Like the Prose: Vol. II
• Smogon GP 101: Helpful Tips and the Basics

Some general useful links:

• Purdue Online Writing Lab
• Corpus of Contemporary American Usage
• Grammar Girl

Start posting your checks here!

 

[LightningLuxray]

Ok, I guess I'll kick this thread off ^.^
Not sure if we're allowed to do two but I guess I'll do that anyways :o

Check #1: RU Delphox
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/delphox-qc-3-3-gp-0-2.3509739/#post-5544932

Check #2: UU Aggron
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/aggron-qc-3-3-gp-0-3.3506675/#post-5545194

One had a lot of changes while the other had only a few, so I decided to post them both ^.^

Thanks for any and all help! :D

 

[fleurdyleurse]

readability: 4.5/5 i'd like to see you use bold, it's easier to read!
voice: 20/20
accuracy: 28/30 you missed a few things, though they were all minor
misc.: 5/5 good stuff

total: 57.5/60

i can't really give suggestions, because those mistakes won't happen after more practice
quite good, LightningLuxray
tagging GatoDelFuego and horyzhnz for feedback

 

[Kangaaroo]

Oh my gosh amazing idea thank you senpai

Anyway, here's a recent check I did that you stamped, fleurdyleurse, but I'd still like to see how I did with it c:

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/vullaby-gp-1-2.3501478/page-2#post-5543249

I'm guessing you'll say I need to use bold, so I'll try and do that with my future amchecks.

 

[fleurdyleurse]

Oh my gosh amazing idea thank you senpai

Anyway, here's a recent check I did that you stamped, fleurdyleurse, but I'd still like to see how I did with it c:

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/vullaby-gp-1-2.3501478/page-2#post-5543249

I'm guessing you'll say I need to use bold, so I'll try and do that with my future amchecks.

readability: 4.5/5 bold pls
Voice: 19/20 you made some major changes but w/e
accuracy: 27/30 missed a few things
misc.: 5/5 good stuff
total: 55.5 n_n

 

[Kangaaroo]

readability: 4.5/5 bold pls
Voice: 19/20 you made some major changes but w/e
accuracy: 27/30 missed a few things
misc.: 5/5 good stuff
total: 55.5 n_n

What exactly did I miss?

 

[fleurdyleurse]

Technically, you didn't miss something, but the correction was incorrect, and that goes into accuracy.

 

[Ununhexium]

Ubers Lucario (I cant get links to work lol http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/lucario-gp-3-3.3502523/page-2#post-5510139)

UU Cacturne there we go

 

[fleurdyleurse]

readability: 5/5 not bold but the colours are great
voice: 20/20 you keep the writer's voice
accuracy: 26/30 you missed some grammar and spelling; these things are quite important
misc.: 5/5 gud stuff
Ununhexium

 

[fleurdyleurse]

SuperJOCKE let me doublepost
tags for am checkers:
Unfixable
RotomPoison
Alphose_Elric
KS2
Galladium

 

[RotomPoison]

Hey why not.

Let's try this one

 

[Kangaaroo]

Hey fleurdyleurse could amcheckers rate other amchecks?

 

[fleurdyleurse]

you could, but it's not encouraged.
Lady Salamence and DTC I CAN SEE YOU

 

[a fairy]

I can't see you too because I spent 5 minutes typing this from an iPhone

Voice: Always keep the writer's voice in mind.

Would it be possible to be a bit more specific? I could probably write a paragraph or two regarding vocabulary (does the author write with a more verbose dictionary, or do they write very plain and simply?) terminology (do they call a pokemon he/she/it, do they use just the pokemon's name, or use descriptive words more often, like 'the happiness pokemon' or 'the big fluff ball' as opposed to 'blissey this blissey that') detail (does the author spend 3 sentences describing a pokemon's ability to counter a couple pokemon or do they spend 2/3rds of a sentence?

But I also realize that having a multi paragraph explanation when the one above it is 'easy peasy, don't use pink :)' isn't 'keeping with the voice'

Heh I made a pun

 

[Kangaaroo]

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/amoonguss-gp-0-2.3509741/#post-5549982

Also wow Bummer that art is amazing

 

[skies]

• 
  Sceptile - RU

 

[fleurdyleurse]

wow much load u.u
i'll get to these later

 

[Legitimate Username]

RotomPoison

Readability: 4/5. The comments are much more visible than the changes, but it's not really a big deal.
Voice: 18/20. The removal of many meaningless sentences, while pretty justified, leaves me uncomfortable with giving 20 points here. It's no big deal though, do whatever's necessary.
Accuracy: 24/30. For the most part it was good, but you missed a few errors. The bad part was I found a couple of places where you INTRODUCED errors, such as an accidental deleted period or a missed capitalization. Nothing that can't be solved by being just a little bit more careful, though.
Miscellaneous: 5/5. No real problems that weren't covered by the other sections.

Total: 51/60.

 

[Electrolyte]

Great thread idea, fleurdyleurse

Unfixable:

Readability: 4.5/5
There were no major readability errors, but at times you made a cluster of edits with interlocking red and green changes. This isn't too bad of a thing, it just slowed down my reading pace because I had to sort between the reds and greens. In the future, I would suggest organizing your changes when they get clustered- try to place your edits such that the reds and greens are together in chunks rather than pieces. Just a small thing.

Voice: 17/20
You had a habit of chopping up sentences and putting them back together with semicolons. This wasn't grammatically incorrect but it was unnecessary and also disrupted the author's original writing flow. See: Overview

Accuracy: 26/30
You caught most of the errors, but you missed a few things. Just a note: when mentioning an item-holding Pokemon, always refer to it as "item"(-lacking, if applicable) "Pokemon", or for example Choice Scarf Braviary / Choice Scarf-lacking Braviary. This sounds nicer than putting the item after the Pokemon, which can confuse readers.
Also watch out for parallelism errors; there were a few you missed and also put in yourself O_o

Miscellaneous: 5.5/5
+0.5 for adding a copy/pastable :)


Total: 53/60
Overall, pretty nice check. Again, just watch out for unnecessary prose changes (unless they actually help) and read carefully so you don't miss any errors!

 

[Ender]

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/amoonguss-gp-0-2.3509741/#post-5549982

I went through your amcheck and made note of everything I found (you can view them in the hide tags). I calculated your score and gave you feedback based on these.

Readability: 4.5/5
Really no comments here. I was about to give you a 5, but then I came across the change noted below. In the future, I would recommend just deleting that word entirely and re-writing it for clarity. I would also recommend using the strikethrough for deletions because it makes it absolutely clear, but that's your choice and I didn't take points off for it. Use of bold and different colors were very good and comments were generally easy to understand.

Readability

1. I had no idea how to interpret the "Attackis" change

Voice/Subjective Changes: 14/20
I'm going to include anything subjective in this category. There were several instances where you could have made a very positive change that you missed, several that you caught but didn't correct extremely well, and others that you made good changes to. Keeping the writer's voice and tone is difficult when doing edits because we tend to focus entirely on grammar, syntax, and all of the other mechanical elements that make up the writing, often to the expense of the more fluid and subjective qualities that inject personality into the writing. There is a very fine line between altering voice unnecessarily and making something sound better. Sometimes, the writer will be inexperienced enough that it's unfortunately necessary to change their voice so that the reader can understand what's going on. However, most of the time, the writer will be clear enough that you don't need to change much. If you do want to make changes that are subjective or involve personality elements, the best way to go about that is keeping as many elements as possible the same and change only what is necessary. For example, keep the word the author originally used and just move it somewhere, or alternatively use a different word in the same spot the author wanted to place it. This protects voice without sacrificing mechanical correctness. Another way is to suggest subjective changes in a comment, but make it clear that this is only a recommendation for clarity and that it's not mandatory. You're getting there. This is perhaps the most difficult part of proofreading because we all tend to gravitate towards our own style of writing. The trick is to make changes that preserve as much personality as possible while improving the grammar.

Voice

1. unnecessary change that didn't help
2. ambiguity
3. redundancy not addressed
4. strange syntax not addressed
5. bad sentence structure not addressed
6. dubious diction change
7. changed sentence incompletely
8. dubious diction change
9. dubious diction change
10. dubious diction change
11. bad sentence structure not addressed
12. bad sentence structure not addressed
13. sentence structure should be changed
14. conjunction

Accuracy: 25/30
I noticed quite a few errors that you didn't catch or incorrectly fixed. I would recommend looking through the Spelling and Grammar Standards thread every so often and absorbing what you can. Eventually, it becomes second nature. When in doubt, look it up. Ctrl+f is very useful and has saved me multiple times. A lot of it was punctuation, usually commas. Commas are tricky and learning how to properly wield them is a boon to any writer or editor. I would suggest that you read up on those on a grammar website and pay particular attention to examples, as they often help to clarify the trickier situations.

Accuracy

1. punctuation error along with syntax
2. punctuation
3. punctuation
4. incorrect syntax not addressed
5. smogon-specific error
6. made a change that was marginally better, but not ideal
7. capitalization
8. punctuation
9. grammar
10. bad correction

Miscellaneous: 5/5
Nothing to really say here. Not even sure what this is for. I don't have any comments outside of what was addressed already.

-- --

Total: 48.5/60
You're on the right track. Keep working at it and feel free to talk to me about anything related to this. I'm always happy to help people learn. Don't worry about the numbers. They're arbitrary and I tend to err on the harsher side numerically. Focus on the comments and what you should work on improving.

 

[Kangaaroo]

I went through your amcheck and made note of everything I found (you can view them in the hide tags). I calculated your score and gave you feedback based on these.

Readability: 4.5/5
Really no comments here. I was about to give you a 5, but then I came across the change noted below. In the future, I would recommend just deleting that word entirely and re-writing it for clarity. I would also recommend using the strikethrough for deletions because it makes it absolutely clear, but that's your choice and I didn't take points off for it. Use of bold and different colors were very good and comments were generally easy to understand.

Readability

1. I had no idea how to interpret the "Attackis" change

Voice/Subjective Changes: 14/20
I'm going to include anything subjective in this category. There were several instances where you could have made a very positive change that you missed, several that you caught but didn't correct extremely well, and others that you made good changes to. Keeping the writer's voice and tone is difficult when doing edits because we tend to focus entirely on grammar, syntax, and all of the other mechanical elements that make up the writing, often to the expense of the more fluid and subjective qualities that inject personality into the writing. There is a very fine line between altering voice unnecessarily and making something sound better. Sometimes, the writer will be inexperienced enough that it's unfortunately necessary to change their voice so that the reader can understand what's going on. However, most of the time, the writer will be clear enough that you don't need to change much. If you do want to make changes that are subjective or involve personality elements, the best way to go about that is keeping as many elements as possible the same and change only what is necessary. For example, keep the word the author originally used and just move it somewhere, or alternatively use a different word in the same spot the author wanted to place it. This protects voice without sacrificing mechanical correctness. Another way is to suggest subjective changes in a comment, but make it clear that this is only a recommendation for clarity and that it's not mandatory. You're getting there. This is perhaps the most difficult part of proofreading because we all tend to gravitate towards our own style of writing. The trick is to make changes that preserve as much personality as possible while improving the grammar.

Voice

1. unnecessary change that didn't help
2. ambiguity
3. redundancy not addressed
4. strange syntax not addressed
5. bad sentence structure not addressed
6. dubious diction change
7. changed sentence incompletely
8. dubious diction change
9. dubious diction change
10. dubious diction change
11. bad sentence structure not addressed
12. bad sentence structure not addressed
13. sentence structure should be changed
14. conjunction

Accuracy: 25/30
I noticed quite a few errors that you didn't catch or incorrectly fixed. I would recommend looking through the Spelling and Grammar Standards thread every so often and absorbing what you can. Eventually, it becomes second nature. When in doubt, look it up. Ctrl+f is very useful and has saved me multiple times. A lot of it was punctuation, usually commas. Commas are tricky and learning how to properly wield them is a boon to any writer or editor. I would suggest that you read up on those on a grammar website and pay particular attention to examples, as they often help to clarify the trickier situations.

Accuracy

1. punctuation error along with syntax
2. punctuation
3. punctuation
4. incorrect syntax not addressed
5. smogon-specific error
6. made a change that was marginally better, but not ideal
7. capitalization
8. punctuation
9. grammar
10. bad correction

Miscellaneous: 5/5
Nothing to really say here. Not even sure what this is for. I don't have any comments outside of what was addressed already.

-- --

Total: 48.5/60
You're on the right track. Keep working at it and feel free to talk to me about anything related to this. I'm always happy to help people learn. Don't worry about the numbers. They're arbitrary and I tend to err on the harsher side numerically. Focus on the comments and what you should work on improving.

What do you mean when you list "1. 2, 3, etc."? I made more than 10 corrections.

 

[Ender]

What do you mean when you list "1. 2, 3, etc."? I made more than 10 corrections.

Originally, it was just me counting errors (either attempted fixes or ignored errors) for my own reference, but I figured that it might be helpful information. They're in order within each category, but I didn't link them to specific changes you made. It's more for you to get an idea of the kind of errors you're making while proofreading so that you can visualize your weaknesses. Does that help clear it up?

 

[skies]

Exploud – RU

I honestly felt this had so many changes and I dislike that strongly, I'd love input, though.

 

[Ender]

Exploud – RU

I honestly felt this had so many changes and I dislike that strongly, I'd love input, though.

Readability: 4/5

Not too bad, but I have a few suggestions. First, I wouldn't do something like this: Pokenmon because it's difficult to interpret. You're better off either just spelling the word correctly and highlighting the whole word in bold/green, or crossing out the incorrectly spelt word and write a new one. Also, I would say something when you add or delete punctuation. For example, some people use (AC) for add comma and (RC) for remove comma.

Voice/Subjective Changes: 17.5/20

Overall you did a good job retaining the author's voice and not changing things that didn't need to be changed. Just a couple of instances where there was awkward prose that should have been altered and a couple places where you changed prose that either should have been left alone or should have been changed differently. However, I realize that the analyses you checked had some very questionable sentences and so I was pretty lenient. This was a strong section for you given the difficulty of the changes necessary. My advice would be to read over your changes and see how it sounds once you've made your edits, and then if something still sounds awkward, fix it. This is a great way to avoid causing problems when changing things.

Accuracy: 25.5/30

I found a decent amount of things that you missed. Some of the changes you made sound strange when you read them again, and some things that you didn't change needed to be changed. Some comma issues, some Smogon-specific Pokemon stuff, prepositions, and various other minor things. My recommendation would be to again read over everything after you've made your edits and see how it sounds. You also might want to look over the Spelling and Grammar Standards every so often to keep yourself refreshed.

Misc: 5/5

Nothing else to note.

Overall: 52/60

Very nice work overall. This was a difficult analysis to edit because the writer messed a lot of things up, but you handled it very well. Really, the best way to improve would be to brush up on Smogon and general grammar just a bit and make sure you read the results of your suggested edits after you make them. Don't worry about the scores too much, I grade somewhat harshly (and you still did very well, which is a testament to your ability). Keep practicing and you'll soon have virtually flawless checks.

 

[fleurdyleurse]

I'm posting here to tell everyone that a channel for tutoring for GP has been set up: it's called #fleur