BST Letter Writting Standard

General Yo-Yo
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Hey all,

So I have been yoyoing since the start of this school year, September. I was interested and was into it back when I was in 6th grade! Im a Freshman in College now. I could hit man on trap every other time back then, and thought it was awesome. later on I got out of it and got into magic, and preforming, which till this day I do and love with all my heart. Just look up card flourishing on youtube and it will give you an idea of what I can do.

Any who, my little brother got a Yomega Dash late August for fun, and I tried it out, being this would be my first experience with a ball bearing yoyo, so it was just butter smooth. and 2 days Later I got a Dash myself, which has now sparked my interest again in this fun hobby. Thinking it will give me something to do while in college along with my cards and cubing (rubiks Cube, best time 21.08 sec solved :D) I love doing things with my hands and I have done pen spinning to playing the violin and piano to cards and cubes to now yoyos again! I just love it all!

So know I have gotten my skills back and then some from practice and low and behold meeting another yoyoer at my campus! go figure?! Troy)oyo on the forums here. with his help, he has motivated me to get better and challenge me to work harder. So now I have the passion for yoyos again, and realizing what yoyos fit me and what I like.

Soooo leading to the topic of this thread, the BST. When you post something on there or if your looking around for that Chief you have wanted for months, you are asking the owner to trade or buy said yoyo. I have dealt with many people asking to buy or make deals on my BST and they write 1-2 sentence inquiries, with bad grammar and punctuation. You have to think of it like a business letter. Put a heading, and detail into what you are saying. You want to make the best impression as possible! And if someone lowball’s you, don’t just not respond, even tho it can get annoying, they might offer the best they have and not mean it as an insult. So reply back like a human and be kind about it and respectfully decline there offer.

I realize that the mass majority of the age group on here is under 18, and may not posses the writing skills yet. But at least start with a “Hi” or “Hello” and give a good detailed offer or reply when talking with someone on the BST. Its your first impression that will help you the most. And end with saying something positive! I will almost always end a letter or post with me saying “Cheers!” or “Happy New Year!” because its a good, polite thing to do and shows that your human and not just saying “wuld u trade ur chief for mi bvm? k thnks”

Just something I wanted to say, write to people like they are people and be respectful and courteous to others.

Cheers,

~Chris Severson

And sorry for any grammar or punctuation errors, lol, I just got my 6 wisdom teeth pulled and I am on pain meds. so I tried to proof read this the best I can :smiley:

5 Likes
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Yes someone once said it is annoying when people say, " SE Ava 4 ur ______ and i will make sure that i add a )___ because that is a good deal______ and u see im not capitalazing is and ritin rong bad run on senteces. But it is annoying and writing not writting for title lol.

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I expect people to make a genuine attempt at properly communicating. While yoyo is fairly casual and laid back, I don’t expect language skills to be abandoned. I haven’t had this problem yet with people sending me PM’s.

My thoughts are that BST is a business transaction. It should be done with a degree of formality.

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It’s hard for me to treat people with bad punctuation and grammar with respect, and to take them seriously. Especially on the BST.

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D’awwwww, he is writing about me. :3

Anyway, yes! I tend to avoid anyone who cannot form a sentence correctly.

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I don’t mind some grammar or spelling errors, but yes, I get the impression 90% of the people on here read WAY too many lol cats before sending PMs.

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I’m afraid I often used to catch myself not using the “subject” line. I learned the hard way when the responses said “Re: (No subject)”. If you do a lot of BSTing the subject line is pretty important in PMs.

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I second this. Almost every other message I get now is what seems to be a 4 year old banging on a keyboard trying to convey some sort of message to me. It’s extremely annoying and needs to stop.

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sometimes i go on a rampage and send a lot of pms … and actually i don’t think i ever write anything on the subject lines … (maybe i should start) and i don’t think i ever got a pm/offer with a subject line. I try to write everything correctly as far as grammar and spelling goes.

I think its a good idea to respond back though, even if you don’t like the offer… i usually try to figure out if they have anything else they want to trade, because at least you know that someone if interested in what you have.

It gets annoying sometimes when you have multiple offers going and the one that you really wanted to work out is pending or you are waiting on a reply back from the guy but then you are finalizing another deal … but you really wanted to finalize the first deal cus its a better deal. This happens a lot, people just stop messaging you back in the middle of a deal… i hate that.

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Here’s a prime example of how I write BST related PMs:

If more people did this, I think the yoyo forums would be a much more pleasant business environment.

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That’s a lot to expect from people these days. People have gotten past the point of being overly casual and have just gotten lazy and sloppy when it comes to how they communicate online. Part of has to do with text messaging and the whole IM culture but a lot of it has to do with a general lack of enforcement of proper values.

As I said, BST is a business-type transaction. It should be conducted with a degree of formality.

When I sent a yoyo off for mods, I included a business letter that included all the information requested in the “What to send to a modder” thread. When I sent CASH in an envelop for a bearing to a well respected person here, I also included a business letter saying how much was being sent and what the item in question was. When I did a silly trade of a pair of YYJ response pads for a pair of OD Flow Pads, I also included a business letter detailing the terms of the transaction. When I’ve done everything via PM’s and email, I always keep it in a business tone.

I’m older. I have certain expectations upon myself. What can I say?

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I have made people who text me re-send their messages with proper spelling and grammar before…

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^^^
hard â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– 

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Eh, I’ve done it too. Its a bit ridiculous at times.

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Not really. There’s been a few BST offers that came to me(offers of items to sell me) that I simply deleted because I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

I don’t see why it is so difficult to form a legible sentence and use basic rules of language. I’m not going to grade them like a school teacher. I need to be able to understand the information being presented.

Let’s put it this way:
The money is in MY pocket. If they want it to move to their pocket, it’s in their best interest to put their best effort forward to try to relieve me of my money in exchange for their goods. If I were wanting to SELL something, I’d try to do my best to communicate clearly with the prospective buyer in order to sway them my way to buy the item in question.

Good communication skills will go a long way towards employment, staying employed and business and life in general.

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I have had some PMs before where I had absolutly no clue as to what was going on. No punctuation, no regard for spelling and then there was this one guy, wanted something that I didn’t have. (facepalm). He didn’t even read the bst that I typed because he obviously only looked at the picture. What is the point of typing all, and I mean all, of the possible answers that anybody could have if nobody will even be courtious enough to read the bst. It really gets me livid sometimes. Also the crappy sentence structure and the god awefull shorthand that is being used (thanks to texts and IMs ect, ect.) drives me up the wall.

I’m 18 and I just wonder about the people my age and slightly younger, I wonder how they will act and communicate when they (well we, hehe) get older. ALOT of job related accidents are directly related to miscommunication, not to mention business deals and such. I do worry…

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Agreed. It has gotten to the point where there is no respect for the buyer/seller. As Studio42 put it, your pming someone to either make a sale or trade, which is a business transaction and should be conducted as such. I pray that the communication gets better. Maybe a Moderator can put up a Sticky with the proper, ideal format when contacting others on the BST, like how there is the BST format Sticky.

Just to give those who don’t have the education or knowledge on proper writing formats.

Cheers,

~Chris Severson

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I correct people all the time including teachers. It’s funny how I spent all of middle school reading. Must’ve read at least 250 books plus magazines in those years. Got a whole library cart full of books during 8th grade because they weren’t read too much. Their loss was my gain, plenty of Gary Paulsen and Louis L’amour in that. Anyways, reading made me easily pick up on most flaws. I tend to keep my messages short but try to explain what I want. Example:

Hello I saw that you had a (yoyo here). I am interested in trading my (place yoyo name here) for it. It has a few dings which are all pictured in my BST thread. Would you be interested in trading? Thanks for your time.

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I just had a moment on the “other yoyo forum”.

I said:

"Hey ___,

Unfortunately I did get rid of both my Code1’s. I traded one and sold the other. The only yoyos I have left for sale or trade are as follows: 2010 Severe, Jason Lee Supernova, and a raw unengraved prepro Supernova. The Jason Lee is near mint with one flat spot, however the other two are completely mint. If you’d like to try and work out a deal with one of those then I’d be happy to. Let me know! Thanks!

All The Best! - Connor"

And I got back this:

“both ok”

Its like…what?

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0_o