< Writing Down

~pink2ds

One thing I like about Maro's "New World Order" policy for making drastically simpler Magic cards is that it only has to apply to 80% of the most common cards. That leaves a lot of room for them to play around.

Using heuristics like

the various efforts to codify a "simple" English

can sometimes limit you from constructing the sentence in the most clear and straightforward way. The rule of thumb is getting in the way from the actual intention of the rule.

So a "meta-rule" like "80% of the text should be such-and-such Simple English system" can feel very freeing. It helps you feel the peace of mind that you've used the heuristic "enough" while not forcing you to use it "too much".

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~zampano wrote (thread):

That would help with the standardization aspect, perhaps, but doesn't address the inherent condescension of the practice to begin with.