Public Colored Dialogue and Quoting Posts

[Jacen Nimdok]

I picked up on the habit of coloring a character's dialogue going back to my two-week stint on Pandora RP back in 2014. My understanding of its purpose is that it makes it easier for the other person to reply to you and to make it "pop" a little more. But I'm going to stop doing it for all of my characters because it's getting annoying having to go in and manually color every line, especially on occasions when I wind up writing mammoth posts that are the size of a chapter in a children's paperback. Do any of you really care if people color their dialogue or not? Does it make things easier for you, or is this actually just something people do for fun and I'm totally wrong about it? Have I been punked ever since I was fifteen?

I've also gotten into the habit of quoting dialogue from other people's posts in order to respond to it directly. I don't do it all the time, only sometimes (typically because their post is really long and a lot of stuff happens in it, doubly so if there are several different pieces of dialogue and I only want to respond to a specific line) but I've noticed I seem to be the only one doing it, period. Is this considered weird, or does it annoy people?

If you have no clue what I'm talking about, here's an example:

You can see I've quoted directly from the other writer's previous post and incorporated it into the scene. It makes my post longer, but also allows me to integrate the other character into the scene in a more natural way. I can build my post around another character's actions and dialogue easier.

 

[Jsc]

I use it for two reasons. One, it makes the post easier to navigate after I've read it once or twice. Two, if a post has multiple speakers or NPCs, it differentiates easier. Which I personally find useful enough to continue to use myself.

However, I don't mind if and how other people color their posts or not.

 

[Subject 73 Red]

I fully understand what you mean (I do the exact same thing, both the quoting and the coloring). I just do it because I find it makes things easier for both myself and whomever I am writing with, as I will do dialogue for both my character and NPCs in one post, and I find color-coding them makes it easier for whoever I'm writing with to understand and know who's talking without getting confused. Plus, it helps me, because otherwise I would get confused from my own writing and soon it's hard to tell who's talking anymore.

And I do quotes for the exact same reason. It allows me to better keep track of everything going on and allows me to create a better response without having to double back. Plus, I feel like it allows for better flow when you are able to directly react to another character's actions or words.

But it's mainly to help me and my stupid brain.

 

[Quietus]

I generally have a specific color for every character's dialogue. I find for me, it makes the post easier to read and breaks up walls of text - though I try not to write walls of text anymore. When I have to read walls of text, I generally skim and look for actions and dialogue to respond to and the color helps expedite this.

I also use it to differentiate between recurrent NPCs in a thread (mentioned by Jsc above) which allows for easier post comprehension when a lot is going on.

Do I care if others do it? No. It's personal preference for my own writing style and I've been doing it since 1998. Old habits die hard, something something...

 

[Lief]

I bold my dialogue these days as I can just ctrl+b as I type. Then any NPC dialogue is non-bold. Not a perfect solution by any means, but I too don't like having to go through and colour everything!

 

[Cotan Sar'andor]

I bold my dialogue these days as I can just ctrl+b as I type. Then any NPC dialogue is non-bold. Not a perfect solution by any means, but I too don't like having to go through and colour everything!

unfortunately your bolding of just dialogue versus other parts of the post is inconsistent and makes me and my old man eyes struggle

=P

I go with coloured dialogue because I generally expect people to just skim my longer posts, and it makes it easier for them to pick out the dialogue which is what i normally expect is the only thing they'd be responding to, otherwise it's all a big meh to me.

The site I originally come from we used to just colour everything for specific characters, and we'd often write multiple characters in the same post, because we didn't have any fancy subaccounts or anything, and all the roleplay was done in big location topics rather than having separate individual threads for the little roleplay scenes, so I didn't start colouring dialogue-only until I started doing star wars roleplay stuff.

I also wrote all of this in the way I would if I was just typing on discord and only realized at this final line that "oh, wait, I'm actually on the website I should at least capitalize my I's and sentence beginnings even if everything else is just a big run-on stream of consciousness sort of thing."

 

[Lief]

Cotan Sar'andor I'm consistent in that I use it whenever there's dialogue, liar!

 

[Fatty]

Contrary to your experience, I love coloring dialogue, especially since I very often have multiple speakers. PCs are bright and vibrant, and usually NPCs have muted, less vibrant colors.

The first reason for doing this is because I find it enjoyable, and the second is because I do legitimately find it easier to read/digest, especially on other peoples posts especially if they are long. If I am not ready to sit down and reply, but still reading a post because I love to read replies, I typically give a post a skim, and the dialogue is the first to be seen typically, which gives me something to work with in my brain for a while until I'm ready to respond when I sit down for the day/night/whatever.

Secondly, I do quote posts to respond to specific parts of it occasionally. Sometimes I'll even quote the whole damn thing just so that I can see the posts of who I'm responding to without having to scroll up or open a new tab to reference, especially if I'm lacking in muse and need to design a quick and efficient post without as much introspection as I am want to do when inspired.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

I used to do it, but it became irritating. When I used to be able to colour in Word and control+select areas then copy/paste in and it'd retain them that was good. Now though when the colour is lost I don't bother.

I think bolding the text is a good idea as Lief suggests, I'm trying it with one of my characters now to see how it goes.

 

[Elpsis Kerrigan]

I don't care one way or another.

I used to colour my characters' dialogue, I stopped doing that a good while ago. I never quote posts. I'm true neutral on what others do.

 

[Captain Jordan]

I'll use colored dialogue on any site where it's acceptable or customary, and I'll try to use colors that don't kill people's eyes.

I find it very useful to read as well, and due to various reasons for various people. Everyone writes differently, when something like colored dialogue is a standard, I can at least use that as a baseline to adapt to the rest.

As for quoting posts, I will usually copy in the line of dialogue into my post itself if I absolutely have to. I've never liked the idea of quoting in RP posts, unless it should be read in a different manner somehow (like a flashback or something). It breaks up the flow too much for me.

Personally, I feel like there are better ways to address the shortcut that a quote provides, even if it means readers have to take a bit more time to read and understand what a post is saying. Posts are a snapshot of our character's perspective at the moment, for the most part, so sometimes not having verbatim parts of another character's post is just as important for mine to show how much my character is focusing or putting importance on the words/actions happening around them.

Still, don't let me stop anyone from using what they're comfortable with. As long as your posts are legible, they add to the story, and you're happy with them, then format as you please.