What makes a good quote?

By parcell - updated: 5 years, 2 months ago - 17 messages

What are you looking for in a quote that makes you want to upvote it? Conversely, what makes a quote bad enough to downvote it? Interested to hear some opinions.
By mich415 - posted: 6 years, 2 months ago

I usually downvote quotes with grammatical errors
By marderiv - posted: 6 years, 2 months ago

When a quote is meaningful, good to hear, positive in its content, or is overall smart; at the least that quote deserves an upvote for me.

But when a quote is the opposite, that it is neither smart not meaningful, or calls on over-done cliches or is simply drawn from literature without any other purpose than to have something to type, I tend to downvote.

It's one thing to read and type a quote from Marcus Aurelius and come off at the end of it having learned something or have something to think about afterwards. It's another thing to type an excerpt from a movie or television series with no bearing to positive or critical thought.
By greendesertbeauty432 - posted: 6 years, 2 months ago

I completely agree with you on this.
By koofreyjohnson - posted: 6 years, 2 months ago

This quote got me through stuff
By kayleee.nl - posted: 6 years, 2 months ago

damn. I screenshotted this
By skygate - posted: 6 years, 2 months ago

If it's brief and clear, or particularly meaningful, upvote you go; if it's complex in vocabulary and full of punctuation marks, downvote.
By pj34621 - posted: 6 years, 1 month ago

If it's so beautiful that it makes me think or tear up. And if it has brilliant imagery.
By colemak4ergodox - posted: 6 years, 1 month ago

Meaningfulness and beautiful imagery or prose, as was already said, are great. Beautiful imagery and prose are especially nice because there's nothing political or philosophical about them, and a reader need not be familiar with the source text to appreciate such excerpts.

It's important that the quote still is nice for someone who is unfamiliar with the source. There are many quotes on here from popular TV shows like Grey's Anatomy, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, etc. which are completely meaningless to someone who is not familiar with the show. This doesn't mean that TV shows should never be quoted, but don't assume that everyone has watched the show, because many people never have.

Weird punctuation and grammar and rare words are ok if they are used for a good reason. Having three exclamation points at the end of a sentence is never necessary, but the artful nonsense of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" is interesting.

Also I've come across a couple very funny jokes. Post more jokes :)
By dave_g - posted: 6 years, 1 month ago

I think I strongly disagree with most of the above; the content of the quote is meaningless for learning to type better (which is the point of this site). There are many real-world instances in which your control over/opinion of the content is negligible. Probably, most of them are this way.

Please understand I have truly enjoyed a number of quotes and even learned something from a handful. But learning to type is about the complexity and novelty of the keystrokes. Words, names and punctuation you have rarely or never encountered before are very valuable since they broaden your experience. You are less likely to get this if you train the engine to feed you only quotes from shows or only cerebral considerations or only sappy, self-help platitudes. You need them all.

I believe I did begin up-voting some of the quotes I liked but, after using this site a while, I realized the mistake in this practice. Now, the ones I tend to up-vote are those which caused me a fair bit of difficulty because they contained words or patterns with which I was less familiar. Even occasional grammatical mistakes are worth keeping unless they are excessive since you'll often encounter those in the world, as well.
Updated 6 years, 1 month ago
By ze_or - posted: 6 years ago

I actually prefer use of complex vocabulary and punctuation as long as it makes sense. I am here to practice my typing, not to brag that I am fast to my friends by doing easy tests to get my average wpm up.
By playerofarmor - posted: 6 years ago

This is a consequence of a faulty logic - that to practice typing you need not to think about the quote, but to think of the words and letter combination that construct a quote. If you're practicing your typing to type loads of text from a pre-defined patterns, like retyping from paper, then yes, this logic makes sense. But at least I, and I suppose many others, are typing texts which are going from the head, and you're thinking about what to type, and not about what combinations of letters you are producing.

That is why the meaning of the quote is important. It helps to read and to think about the message that the quote conveys to simulate the "real" conditions, when you are not thinking about the way you type, but thinking about what you are going to say. And that is why quotes which are not interesting to read and have nothing to think about are not good for me, even if they contain such "interesting" words like "qizarate" and "recombobulation".
Updated 6 years ago
By ikasu - posted: 6 years ago

I haven't even looked at that many of the quotes, but an alarming number of those I can speak for aim at some kind of wisdom, or at an aesthetic notion of it.

The majority of them are in some way: not great writing, something I'll call "semantically compromised," or just boring tbh --

If put to consensus vote we could reach quick agreement that the majority are all three, with smaller proportions at two or one, and few indeed merely a borderline case we agree to give the benefit of the doubt. Perfect examples wouldn't be suggested for that kind of review, but it is a very rare bit of submitted wisdom that is both free of problems and attributed to a non-literary source.

I don't understand why so many people feel compelled to post their most recent Facebook posts as quotes, and yet I've made a point to keep an eye out when reading from the moment I saw the quotes here were rated user submissions, and I have not found a series of words that struck me as profound or clever or whatever -- and was also appropriate for a typing game that someone such as myself, with my neuroses and serious anxieties and my awful habit of thinking in endless run-on sentences, can play to warm up for writing or transcribing or because they are convinced that they would die to sit there and do nothing during bite-sized lengths of downtime at work
Updated 6 years ago
By ikasu - posted: 6 years ago

So it's not that I disagree with my complaints there, b/c I really have seen enough self-attributed quotes that there's a bit of a weird vibe coming from the game in general. I just want you all to be warned: posts like that are what happen if you don't sleep for 3 nights.
By this - posted: 5 years, 2 months ago

I like quotes from literature (I added a few hundred from my old account), partially from a hope that by typing along with strong writing, my own writing will improve. I also like typing less common words since it helps me remember how to spell them. I dislike weird punctuation, sappy aphorisms, and quotes from political pundits.
By bitbat - posted: 5 years, 2 months ago

:thumbs up: That’s a good answer.
By weesin - posted: 5 years, 2 months ago

I think a quote is a "good quote" if it doesn't have any errors in it (spelling puncutation etc) and as long as it is not offensive to the general public. Some idiots using this site think posting misogynistic rap lyrics is acceptable...it is not...spread your hate somewhere else please

I don't have to like, or relate to, the message of the quote in order to consider it a good quote. I'm on this site to improve my typing skills so the content of the quote is irrelevant to me personally.
By jacksonm - posted: 5 years, 2 months ago

I agree that the how meaningful the quote is does factor into whether I upvote or downvote that quote.

However, I also think about how easy it is to type. I prefer moderately challenging paragraphs - not too easy and too hard because isn't that what we're here to practice??