Okay, so I'm getting mighty confused here. You all probably know I'm a stickler for rules, and I hate breaking them but lately I've been getting mixed signals.

You've probably seen someone before draw a symbol above a letter space to show what that letter is. Example: drawing three squiggly lines to represent a River, the letter R for that space.

Over the past month or two, I've seen new players abusing it by doing every letter in their word that way, which is annoying. I've also seen it used sparingly or as a last resort by newbies and oldbies alike.

Is it against the rules? Technically, probably yes. "You're not allowed to use letters, numbers or symbols." But to follow those to the letter (so to speak) we'd have to warn every time someone wrote a number or an # or &. We just have to ascertain whether or not drawing a River for R counts as a symbol.

Either way, I think we could adapt. But I've heard people (no names), some of them very respected players, express their distaste for people doing that. Depending on who's in the room, one could be warned or even yelled at for using those symbols inside of words.

I think we should really talk about this and voice our opinions so that we can come to a consensus whether or not we should do this and if we should warn for it.

Please tell me what you think and if it's okay or not okay... :)

> My opinion: I think it is okay as a last resort or to be used very infrequently... not like some people who spell out, for example, "car" as "cat, apple, tree." I mean, really.