Curse of the Q

This is pretty pointless but it's bugging the living daylights out of me.

In the past few weeks there's been a rising trend of people replacing 'req.' (referring to their weaponry requirements) with the letter Q. What I want to know is, why?

"WTS Q9 Elemental Sword" makes no sense to me but perhaps I'm missing something. R9 works for me because R is the initial of 'Requires', right?

One of the guru rules is "Do not abuse the English language."

LMAO, best thread ever...

May have something to do with selling in the "Party Search" doodad.
Limited space.. That might have started something that we can never recover from.

Alternative theory:

"Q" people are lazier than "Req." people. Which are actually lazier than "Requirement" people.

OP, this thread made me giggle... Then the Bridge thing just kicked butt..

If you are studying Linguistics, you will find there are many random happenings of the English language.

In fact, the English Language is the evolution of about 1000 years of Arabic, Germanic, Latin and other languages.

One thing that makes linguistics interesting is that the written language of English has many letter combinations to reflect how a word sounds. One Irony is the word Phonetic: the way one writes a word how it sounds. To spell the phonetic of Phonetic is Fo-net-ik.

Now, take this into account. English has had a long history of spoken language with the written language by the historical elite. You will find that the grammar and linguistics of how English was written did not reflect how it was spoken by the masses. You will find more of the colloquial spoken language reflect how it was written. The Written English Language has historically been altered to reflect some kind of separation from the Nobility and the masses.

Only now does mass communication, the internet and standardization (Macquarie Dictionary etc) has made the English language more reflective of how it is spoken.

NOW! On to the Q problem you bring up.

When the word Requirement is spoken the strongest part of the word linguisticly is the Quire part of the word. It has 2 syllables, it has a harsh sounding Consonant (The Qu) and the other harsh sounding consonant is the T but it is too far at the end of the word.

The use of Q shows a reflection on how today, the written language is reflecting the spoken. Although it is wrong in terms of "proper" English, linguistically, It can be understandable that people would choose to use Q rather than R. But then, what IS propper English?

People sometimes sound the words out when they read, or move their lips. Some people have an inner dialogue when they read. Using the Qu section of Requirements speeds up this inner discourse, and Q is a unique consonant and means it also stands out more, and is more recognizable.

Often you will find that, if you say Quirements to someone, there is some kind of inner mechanism that fills in the blanks. If YOU say Quirements to person A. Persona A will Hear "Requirements" because they fill in the blanks. Its a linguistic phenomenon. Like the work Opacity. You can say Pacity, and if you know the word Opacity, you will automatically fill in the O if you think that is the word, and often, people will not know you just skipped a letter or two.

Lkie tihs pmoehonenn wrehe you can sltil unanterdsd tihs stnaence - as long as the first and last letters are the same. Amazing.

Sing Toe.

The "new" trade listing feature in the game restricts the length of the text entry for item descriptions and forces people to go to extremes with their shorthand. Spontaneous order results when people start choosing to use the same shorthand. So, WTS simply becomes "S" and WTB becomes "B". And, REQ becomes "Q".

And, all this new lingo carries over into the forums. Language grows organically...like the plague.

One of the big reasons I'd like to see an Auction House functionality in the game is so I don't have to wrack my brain interpreting all the trade jargon.

...And here I thought this thread was going to be about some guy that appears out of thin air with a flash, doles out some witty, omnipresent banter, then disappears again with a snap of his fingers.

lol you are forgetting about the part about always causeing some disgrief too lol

R# is used to describe rank, I guess is the reason it's Q#.

Odd as it might seem, English is terribly difficult to learn because of the many variations and exception to rules. I imagine Q for requirement is much like Xp for Experience. As stated above, the hard consonant supersedes the first part of the word when it's abbreviated. I am without a doubt, a horrible speller...though I think if I lived in Italy, I'd have no problem. You see, Italian is a Phonetic language...everything is spelled as it sounds...which accounts for the decidedly fewer cases of dyslexia reported in that country. As for Q for requirement, I usually go to Rq as the shortest abbreviation when I run out of space...Q, while it makes a certain kind of sense, just seems lazy. As we have developed technologically, I have noticed a disturbing trend...I have students who use texting script when writing papers for class. I've seen u for you, IMHO for in my humble opinion and r for are/our one several occasions...between texting and the advent of spell check programs, I'm afraid the English language is going to lose some of it's potency. As it is, peoples' vocabularies have diminished to the point that expression and communication in general are less specific and descriptive...reminds me a bit of 1984 ("new speak"). Losing words until expression is limited and freedom is lost? Could it happen? Certainly seems as if we are heading that way. Everyday I am asked, "Why do you use such big words?" by students...dilligence, delinquents, hierarchy, malignant, succumb, treachery, embrace....these words seem "big" to you? God, I hope not.