I do usually use color for dialogue; but I also use quotation marks. I don't find it all off-putting if people don't; but I know some people do find it easier to note speech when it's colored,so why make it harder on those people? Whilst there may be some who find it easier in just black and white; I find them a lot rarer; and if someone tells me in a game they find color off-putting, I'll adapt for them.

What I don't understand, though, and have still never seen a decent explanation of, is why speech is coloured. It's like it's being treated as more important than the other text, when that's not necessarily the case - like I mentioned before, a character's actions might be so much more important than what they're saying. And there could be any number of subtle little hints and clues in the narrative outside of the dialogue which might clue you in on stuff you should be paying attention to - someone fidgeting about a lot whilst talking, for example, with the implication that they're lying or at least not telling the whole truth. If you only paid attention to the speech, you'd miss that. If you're gonna put speech in colour, why not do the same for people's names, so that you know who's being referred to? Or verbs, so you know what everyone is doing? Or nouns, so you know what kind of items or creatures are present? Or maybe punctuation symbols, so exclamation marks stand out when someone is shouting or full stops in case you didn't notice the sentence had ended? Why speech? All or nothing, surely?

If you color everything, the whole point is lost.

I once had it explained by someone who's had novels published, that people in PbP don't usually do new paragraphs for dialogue all the time; which authors generally do for their novels. She said that she could deal with that, as long as they colored their speech instead. If they did neither, she found it really frustrating, and hard to follow as to what was said, what was thought, and what was action.

Maybe people just like a bit of color.

I usually colorize my speech, or italicize it, while still using punctuation as appropriate.  Sometimes I use italics and color.  There are times when a post of mine might include two, three, or four characters, and one's speech might be italicized, while another uses blue text and still another uses green italicized text.  A favorite color for NPC speech is brown.  I don't use bold other than to indicate emphasis, because I like reserving it for that emphasis.

Why just the speech?  Why not?  I like a bit of standardization and pattern, and I like the look of just 'so' much color.  I use more descriptive text than speech, so to me it looks better to use my color in speech.

I'm not lazy, and I write pretty well, thank you very much, both in regards to grammar and creativity.  I find it funny to see 'lazy' listed as a possible reason for using color, when it actually takes more effort.  Maybe all the people who use black and white are the lazy ones, because they can't be bothered remembering which color they've used consistently or take the extra steps. :P

You know, over the years, I've developed my own style of handwriting.  I make my capital 'S' even in cursive writing to look like the printed version.  Is it because I am too lazy to make the cursive S?  Because I don't understand that a bunch of people over the years decided that the proper format to make a cursive S is 'this'?  Am I juvenile or mentally deficient because I choose to write in this manner?  There are letters that I also make more 'printed' than standard cursive, not because I don't know how, but because it 'flows' better for me, and there's probably a hint of individuality in there as well.

And, ya know, pencils have been perfectly good for writing for decade upon decade, and I can't stand writing with them.  If I'm writing (as opposed to typing) I use a pen.  I'd hunt the office and the house over if I could only find a pencil before I'd give up and use said pencil. Oh, and I tend to prefer blue ink over black, red, and even purple ... which is weird, because I love purple.

And I prefer white paper as opposed to yellow, even when I use paper pads -- even enough that I'll still buy the white notepads if the yellow ones are on sale.

Bottom line, people like different things.  Sometimes it's just that simple and that complex.

In reply to Ameena (msg # 19):

I've actually seen people who do use colours for things other than speech - the GM in those cases will usually have a list of required colours - this colour for speech, this one for thoughts, this one for body language, this for movement, this for game rules stuff...  It's not very common and, again, it's all down to the GM's personal taste.

Just like choosing not to use colours.

Yeah, those games I avoid.  <grrins>

It's yet another subject where you'll hit polarized opinions and are unlikely to shift anyone from one camp to another.  No "ah, I see now, I was wrong all this time" epiphanies.

Using or not using colours will probably annoy about half of your fellow players either way, so in the words of Rick Nelson - "can't please everyone, so you <beat> got to please yourself."  Or more importantly, your GM. ;>

Curse you, Skald!

*goes to add Ricky Nelson to my Spotify playlists*

In reply to Ameena (msg # 19):

I'm in a couple of games with people who seem to have some kind of learning disorder (I say 'seem to' because they've never said anything, but what they respond to in posts indicates they have some difficulty reading or processing long posts).  At least one of them has found a way to make that work for him by playing a character with poor social skills, who has a hard time interpreting vocal inflections, bidy language, etc...

For him, coloring speech is very helpful.  He knows exactly what stuff to focus on...his character hears the colored text.  He may not understand if it's sarcasm, or if someone is being evasive or reluctant...so he doesn't need to try and muddle through the rest if the post.  He just focuses on what is said and takes it at face value.

So, while I'm fairly sure that wasn't the reason coloring text was developed, it does have some practical justifications.  Personally, I don't care much one way or the other...I go with whatever the GM wants, or, in the event of the GM not having a preference, whatever seems to be the norm among the other players.

Except for games where EVERYTHING has to be color-coded.  That's far too much trouble, for me.

Coloring DM here.

I'm no grammar nazi, but formatting and legibility are two very important things with me. I try to encourage people to write as well as they are capable, but even for colored dialogue I expect people to still use opening and closing quotations. I've read many books in my time, and I'm perfectly capable of following who's speaking in them without colored text. But in the context of RPOL, I strongly prefer colored/formatted speech (with each character choosing his or her preferred color), because it helps me add an extra dimension to the scenes that I'm writing, and offers other uses as well. Both for my benefit, and (I hope) for the benefit of my players.

If a character has a deep voice, I say as much in my descriptive text, and then try to follow it up with formatted speech that reflects the tone I'm going for. Rose is a good color for this, just as an example. I try to be consistent with these color choices, so that when a new character is introduced, players instinctively have a frame of reference that helps them to stay rooted in the scenes we're trying construct.

Given that many of the posts in my game can also be quite long, it also helps to break up the text and allows me to find key quotes or concepts at a glance when looking through older threads. My game has over 10k posts, and both myself and my players are constantly having to research old threads to remind ourselves what enemies or allies specifically told them sometimes (literally) years prior! A combination of F3 search, and colored text, is key to making that process easier!

Given that I run a Pathfinder game, I find that orange is excellent color for differentiating narrative from dice rolls and combat actions. I also find that emboldened red and purple work well as headers and footers, for introducing or closing scenes, or announcing who's turn it is during combat. Those colors are very conspicuous, and they help with those at-a-glance thread searches I mentioned earlier.
This message was last edited by the user at 20:50, Mon 08 Feb 2016.

I'd say I also land in the camp of people that want color to enhance, not replace punctuation.  If you mouse over and highlight the entire post, it should still be correct and readable.

Personally, I find that coloring the text makes me more cognizant of what I'm posting.  Am I throwing out way too much prose?  Am I not communicating to my fellow players appropriately?  Did I just spend a thousand words for what amounts to looking pensive and saying "hey"?

For an example of fiction that colors text, one that comes to mind is the Eclipse Phase fiction stuff.  Because they have many modes of communication going on, they utilize colored text quite a bit.

I nearly always use color or a specific font along with plain 'ol punctuation in my writing to denote the character speaking, for reasons of both readability and to convey the personality of the character without needing to say a lot. Once a character has been established, people will quickly  become conditioned to associate those colors and visual style with a given character, and it immediately puts them in the proper mindset and emotional state when reading posts from and replying to that character. It's a bit of psychological trickery that's worked for me for over a decade now here on RPoL and on other sites and in other mediums.

Hmm. This is a great subject for a potential paper in psych class. Thanks a lot guys!
This message was last edited by the user at 15:20, Wed 17 Feb 2016.

I thoroughly detest colorized speech.  There is no reason for it.  Ever.

Tell us how you really feel =)

You know, except for all of the reasons cited by other people in this thread.

Wow, I'd never thought this would evoke such strong opinions. Thanks for everyone's contributions!

Here's my opinion on the whole thing:

I don't mind it. If it help with the game, use it. I can do well enough with monochrome, if it suits the GM, and just as well with color. If color is not used as a mere gimmick, but is used to assist the gameplay, it's a good idea.

For gamers who find colored text a distraction, how about adding an option to read all the text in monochrome?

In reply to Space27 (msg # 33):

That option already exists.

In User Preferences, under the option to change your colour scheme choose "create one", and then tick the box marked "Disable colouring in messages".  Does just what it says, and people who dislike coloured text never have to see it again.

In reply to bigbadron (msg # 34):

Uh-mazing.  Now I can stop taking antiemetics.

I think I tried setting the colour scheme to "custom" but it changed something else about the setup of the site that I just didn't like. I can't remember what, though, off the top of my head.

I like to use coloured font for two things.

One is to make it easier on the eye. The same as using double paragraph breaks and short paragraphs. It also makes it easier to spot the part of the page I want while scrolling.

The other reason is that I like to pick colours which resonate with the character's personality for me.

In reply to Ameena (msg # 11):

I don't think your theory about people being lazy works too well. I prefer the use of colored text for speech, yet I also try to make sure that I have correct placement for my punctuation. In games I play in or run I always used colored text for my speech, it makes it pop and really most of the time that is all people see. Even in interactions in the rel world most people only hear what people say so the speech stands out. If they just make a quick pass over it at least they read what my character said. The people/characters that tend to pay attention will not only hear the words but also pay attention to the context of what is said and how.

I have played in games where it is requested not to use colored speech, it doesn't bother me too much to not do it. I don't see a reason to actively avoid games that do either, it just seems like you're limiting yourself based solely on a cosmetic choice.

The possibility of people being lazy was just one suggestion I came up with when trying to work out why people want to put such an emphasis on speech. Non-verbal communication is often much more important than verbal communication so I just don't get why people want to have part of their narrative to be "shouting" at the reader by being in colour and all "Hey, look at me, I'm important!" when the reader should be giving the entire text equal attention lest they miss some important clue (like the speaking person subtly slipping their hand into their coat or behind their back whilst talking to you about how dangerous it is round here and just the other day some guy got stabbed, oh it was terrible, etc) or just generally some fun bit of fluff in the narrative or whatever.

To reduce people confusing what was spoken and what was not.
To portray character.
because it's easier to read and recognise as speech either when people fail to spot speech tags or fail to use them
Because you are more likely to hear someone speak than notice their body language
because some players will post 800 words and frankly I don't want to ride their vanity trip just to get to part I can actually act on

In reply to Ameena (msg # 39):

Ironically, perhaps, there are a great many people who are unaware of non-verbal communication.  They still do it, if course, but it's all on a subconscious or even instinctive level.  They notice what is spoken, they react to it more strongly than to inflection or body language...

Colored text is just another tool available to help people with gaming.  In that regard, it's no different than, say, having the dice roller automated to handle the specifics of the various systems (calculating successes or failures, re-rolling dice as necessary, etc)  Those are functions that could all be done without the help of the dice roller, it's just faster and easier with it.  Some people feel that using colored text facilitates communicating information in their posts.  There's nothing wrong or right about it, it just works well for some.  For others, it doesn't.

Because not everyone here has the skill and experience of a novelist to know how to break up a paragraph and not bury speech in a single wall of text that contains no paragraph breaks.  If everyone here could write like a well edited published novel, I don't think that the colored text would be particularly helpful, but that isn't the world we live in.