RULES

The following rules are enforced by the program:

1. No user may use the program to add a word twice without an intervening
   word from another user.
2. No spaces or control characters may appear within the word (but spaces
   may appear before the word starts).
3. Extra long words will be rejected.

The following rules are not (for reasons which are reasonably obvious)
enforced by the program, but infringement may cause some nasty mail
messages in your mail box:

4. Do not add multiple words separated by hyphens, dots, or some other
   non-blank characters.
5. Do not add large volumes of words by collaborating with your neighbour
   (competing with your neighbour is OK).
6. Each sentence, when complete, must make some kind of sense and be
   relevant to the general thread of the story. The following sentence
   (which I have made up) should not appear in the story:
   
   The pineapple wibble exploded splodge Jamie enthusiastically aubergine.

7. If you add a word, then you should, when challenged, be able to state
   a possible completion of the sentence which obeys rule 6.
8. All the characters which appear in the story shall be fictional, and
   any resemblance to any ECSlab member, whether living or dead, shall
   be purely coincidental. That means that you should not use the word
   Dugan, or type an existing email address, or add a surname to a
   forename in such a way that the result is the name of an ECSlab member.

Instructions

To use oneword, type

~imc/misc/oneword

[that is, /mclab/imc/misc/oneword to those with hazeltine shells :-) ]

The story so far will be displayed, and you just have to enter the
next word. For example,

 The story so far...
 There once lived a

 Enter your word. If you want to start a new paragraph,
 prefix your word with a space.
 If you do not want to enter a word, just press return.
 horse

Note: If the first character you type is a space, then a new paragraph
will begin. Otherwise the current paragraph will continue. It is now
possible to add a full stop and start a paragraph at the same time (more
about punctuation later), by typing a space then a full stop.

Your word will be added to the story, provided it does not fail the
tests described below. Your user number will be logged, so that a word
count can be calculated (and so that you do not use the program twice
in succession).

The general idea is that a _sensible_ story builds up with no two
consecutive words added by the same user. It is quite possible to
cheat the program by collaborating with your neighbour, but this
is strongly discouraged.

Punctuation 

If your word ends with punctuation marks, these will be added as if
they were part of the word itself, and there are no problems. If your
word starts with punctuation marks, then these are processed separately.
Punctuation marks are defined to be the following symbols: )"'!,.:;?}]
and may be interspersed with spaces. Note that the symbols `([{ are not
treated as punctuation marks, because they always appear attached to the
left of a word. The symbol " is a quotation mark, and receives slightly
different treatment (the symbol ' is not treated differently, since it
always appears attached to the right of a word, just like other
punctuation marks. It should not be used as an opening quote, since
the symbol ` exists for that purpose).

Any punctuation marks which appear to the left of your word will be
added to the story (with no spaces) before your word is processed.
Then a space is added (or a new paragraph started if necessary),
followed by your word. Special treatment is given to quotation marks,
as illustrated by the following examples:

Opening quotes: (i.e. the quote is attached to the word you enter)
"word            [no other punctuation marks, no space]
, "word          [some other punctuation marks and a space]

Closing quotes: (i.e. the quote is added to the previous word)
" word           [no other punctuation marks, but with a space]
,"word           [some other punctuation marks, no space]
," word          [an optional space before the word]
", word          [the quote is not the last punctuation mark]

imc