I'm not "literate" technically. Well at least not high school level and certainly not college level. I dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen and got my G.E.D. so that I could get a job and help take care of my family. Now then, rather than responding to your individual questions, which Tahiel has already done, and excellently I might add, I think I am going to respond to your thoughts and opinions as a whole, sharing my own experiences as is my want to do is such cases.

As for the term "literate" with concern to role play, it is one I have always disdained, my self. I've been role playing, table top games since I was eight years old and online games since I was around fourteen. That is more than ten years, for the latter alone, so I have seen a lot of things. Any how, when I first saw that term being used, it was meant as a slap in the face to so called 'lesser quality' role players. It was a demand for quality, that quite frankly I found to be on the snobbish side.

Then we come to the nitty gritty of how people play. I, my self, have n odd little set of standards that most people won't understand. I will happily play with; and match post length and quality with, any one who can offer me a single, high quality line right up through some one who will give me about five paragraphs of material with room for me to respond. I don't like one liners that give you no place to respond, but honestly ten paragraphs describing the distant scenery or the current politics not only give me no place to respond but waste my limited role playing time with ideas or concepts that simply do not relate.

Now here the thing, I LOVE reading books. Between audio books and paper books I recently estimated that I read approx. ten hours a day (eight hours going to audio books at work every day and two going to the written text of what ever novel I am reading before I go to bed). I think what people for get though, who consider them selves literate or advanced literate role players, is that they are playing a GAME not writing a book. Role playing games are all about character interaction, you can work things like back ground facts and musings into the game, but you must make interaction the primary goal. I honestly feel that more than one to two paragraphs and your characters are no longer properly interacting. In what I consider to be a good book, characters will often interrupt each other, not act out and speak a set of words then be given a monologue of a response. I think we should model our games after that concept rather than the idea that massive amounts of paragraphs equal quality and skill level.

On the mechanics of role playing and the English language. Firstly, Tah, dear, people who make the effort to learn our language, as a whole appear to have a much better grasp of the rules than those native to the words. In my case, I know my sentence structure is out there to say the least, and I have trouble dividing my personal thoughts into paragraphs because what I define as a separate thought tends to be outside the norm. How ever, I DO make the effort to spell correctly and convey my thoughts and feelings in meaningful way, and I appreciate any player who does the same. I will not tolerate chat speak in my role plays...Heck, I won't tolerate it in texts, I fuss at people who chat speak me via text all the time. I also live by spell check, having many words stuck in my brain with the incorrect spelling, and appreciate((Randomly** that one, I ALWAYS put an I for the second vowel >>)) people who take a few moments to make their writing more legible. I don't care so much about grammar, being not well versed in the subject my self, so long as I can understand what the person is trying to say and in what order.

So, here we are. I like the concept of beginner, intermediate, and advanced, but then I never liked the literate tag. I consider my self a living example of why that tag is both rude and not being used as intended. And I think the thoughts of those before me are wonderfully well written and more or less agree with the both of you ;p...

>.> The end?