BakaTheIdiot
Viscount of Spaghetti Code
A lot of us like to joke about things that turn us off to a Roleplay, but after reading what I consider to be one of the most monstrously bad short stories I've ever laid eyes on (it was for a class and I won't get too far into it for privacy reasons), I just need to know: what are the big no-no's in writing for you? Crimes so heinous that it will permanently taint your remaining reading for the duration of that piece? Mistakes or decisions so egregious that you simply have to stop? So long as you can back it up, everything is valid here.
My cardinal sins of writing, in no particular order:
1. Comic Sans
I'm willing to let a lot of writing choices slide in my life, but come on, aside from it being just ugly, it's super unprofessional. There's a reason RPN does not condone this heinous font.
2. Spacing out every single word in a sentence with a newline.
I was very tempted to structure it as described for a joke. But I couldn't stand it. It takes so much longer to read and has no impact whatsoever.
3. A lack of punctuation altogether.
I get it, we all miss a period here and there. It happens. But if you're giving me multiple pages of writing to read and not a single dialogue piece has any punctuation in it at all we've got a problem.
4. Willfully ignoring the plot so that you can pursue your own.
Some people want to do their own thing, and sometimes that can be really interesting and advance the goals of the party: it can be really engaging and exciting to take a trip through the mind of a character within a group. Every so often though, someone will make it their entire agenda to sprawl away from the plot at every turn, and make every single side adventure be about their character in the process. Such instances are especially common in Dungeons and Dragons, in my experience, but it can and does happen within group roleplays too - and it is a very quick tool to kill my involvement with it.
And that's more or less it. Curious to see what other people come up with.