Some typos in the intro cutscene

Unknownlight · Mar 8, 2020

Eggman looked at the screen, and just shrugged it off.

This is improper comma usage. It should just be:

Eggman looked at the screen and just shrugged it off.

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Sonic knew he was getting closer to the zone, and pushed himself harder.

Same problem. There shouldn't be a comma there.

Sonic knew he was getting closer to the zone and pushed himself harder.

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"You're not quite as gone as we thought, huh? Are you going to tell us your plan as usual or will I 'have to work it out' or something?"

There should be a comma after "usual".

"You're not quite as gone as we thought, huh? Are you going to tell us your plan as usual, or will I 'have to work it out' or something?"

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"Now what do we do?", he asked.

There shouldn't be a comma there.

"Now what do we do?" he asked.

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Eggman sat back in his eggmobile and began to count down as he saw the Greenflower mountain on the monitor.

Later in the intro, there's this line: "Greenflower Mountain was no more." This should be consistent.

Eggman sat back in his eggmobile and began to count down as he saw Greenflower Mountain on the monitor.

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Eggman sat back in his eggmobile and began to count down as he saw the Greenflower mountain on the monitor.

Same line! This is more debatable, but I would treat "eggmobile" as a proper noun and capitalize it. Combined with the previous change, this line would be:

Eggman sat back in his Eggmobile and began to count down as he saw Greenflower Mountain on the monitor.

That said, if you want to treat "Eggmobile" as a common noun, like "Eggman sat back in his car", then the current usage is right.

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Sonic arrived just in time to see what little of the 'ruins' were left.

This isn't a typo, but this sentence makes no sense in the current context. It implies that the mountain was previously in ruins even before the attack... or something. I don't even know.
Also, if you keep this line for some reason, it should use double quotes here, not single quotes.

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Eggman took this as his cue and blasted off, leaving Sonic and Tails behind.

Not a typo, but this line is funny now that you can see Knuckles right there.

Tatsuru · Mar 8, 2020

Unknownlight said:
Same line! This is more debatable, but I would treat "eggmobile" as a proper noun and capitalize it. Combined with the previous change, this line would be:

That said, if you want to treat "Eggmobile" as a common noun, like "Eggman sat back in his car", then the current usage is right.

Additionally, Eggman's trademark vehicle is the Egg Mobile: two separate words.

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Unknownlight said:
There shouldn't be a comma there.

The comma being inside or outside the end of quotation marks ends up being an American/British English discrepancy, and given how the game is written in American English, you'd expect the comma to be inside the quotes instead.

Unknownlight · Mar 8, 2020

Ikkarou Tatsuru said:
Additionally, Eggman's trademark vehicle is the Egg Mobile: two separate words.

Oh! I hadn't realized that was the real name from the Sonic games. In that case it's definitely a typo.

Ikkarou Tatsuru said:
The comma being inside or outside the end of quotation marks ends up being an American/British English discrepancy, and given how the game is written in American English, you'd expect the comma to be inside the quotes instead.

No, there shouldn't be a comma at all. You don't put it there when the quote ends with a question mark. It has nothing to do with American/British styles.

Tatsuru · Mar 8, 2020

Unknownlight said:
No, there shouldn't be a comma at all. You don't put it there when the quote ends with a question mark. It has nothing to do with American/British styles.

Nevermind me then. Somehow the question mark completely flew over my head

toaster · Mar 8, 2020

Hi! I helped update the intro's text for 2.2. The only sections I would agree are incorrect are the implication of "'ruins'", the inconsistency in capitalisation of "mountain" vs "Mountain", and the textual absence versus graphical presence of Knuckles. Comma placement and the like is reasonably sane and preserves reading cadence as well as it can, and "eggmobile" vs "Egg Mobile" vs "Eggmobile" is a personal preference thing and as such I left it as per the original intro text's selection (It was previously printed as all upper case, but the code had mixed case text).

I'd personally suggest changing the aforementioned sections to "what little of the peaks were left", standardising on capital M, and "leaving our heroes behind", but other alternatives are totally worth considering too.

Unknownlight · Mar 9, 2020

Hi, toaster. I'll elaborate on all of my points then.

I'll start with the easiest one to explain first:

"Now what do we do?", he asked.

That comma absolutely should not go there. There's no argument here. That's just a total typo. Even other places in the cutscene agree:

"Curses!" Eggman yelled.

You can read further about the rules for punctuating dialogue here or a million other places online.

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Now for everything else. This is all basically going to boil down to "Commas have rules! You can't just place them wherever you feel there should be a brief pause in speaking!"

Here are some grammar rules for commas if you want to read it yourself.

If you disagree that commas have rules, and you do just want to place them wherever you think feels good, then... well, that's an opinion all right, and I can't stop you. Oh well. Anyway:

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Eggman looked at the screen, and just shrugged it off.

In the link above, this is covered in the section "Comma Between Two Verbs in a Compound Predicate".

Basically, you can tell if a sentence is supposed to have a comma or not by removing all the "clutter" (adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, etc.) in the sentence and then seeing the result. Just focus on actions the subject takes.

> Eggman looked (at the screen), and (just) shrugged (it off).
> Eggman looked, and shrugged.

The comma shouldn't be there. The sentence should be "Eggman looked and shrugged".
Similarly, you'd write: "They walked and talked" or "She sang and danced".

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Sonic knew he was getting closer to the zone, and pushed himself harder.

This is exactly the same problem as above. It's just a bit less obvious.

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Are you going to tell us your plan as usual or will I 'have to work it out' or something?

There should be a comma after "usual". This is kinda-sorta covered in the "Comma Splices" section in that above link.

Basically, an "independent clause" is a phrase that would still work as its own sentence without any rewriting.

> Are you going to tell us your plan as usual? - Independent clause.
> Will I 'have to work it out' or something? - Independent clause.

There are two ways to join independent clauses:

Use a comma followed by a conjunction (and, or, but, etc.) "I went to the mall, and I met Alice there."
Use a semicolon. "I went to the mall; I met Alice there."

Of course, you could just leave them as two sentences. "I went to the mall. I met Alice there."

The sentence "Are you going to tell us your plan as usual or will I 'have to work it out' or something?" consists of two independent clauses. There has to be a comma before "or" to properly join them.

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...This post took a surprisingly long time to write. It's not even especially long. I regret everything.

Some typos in the intro cutscene

Unknownlight

Member

Tatsuru

2.3 will have menus

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Unknownlight

Member

Tatsuru

2.3 will have menus

toaster

トースタちゃん

Unknownlight

Member

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