I'm sure we've all seen a lot of bad shouts in our time. And I'm not talking about chatter or spam, I'm talking about shouts that attempt to provide info but contain useless words mindlessly copied because someone saw another person use the same format.

The purpose of a shout is to provide information. Your goal should be to provide all the relevant details other players need to judge whether or not they're interested. Basically that means: what your purpose is, capacity of your party, level range (if appropriate), and any caveats like a specific class of job you need etc. So it winds up looking something like: "CoP mission 4, [looking for members], @ 4, need support job". Or: "Salvage Arrapago Remnants 2F 3F 4F Boss, @ 3 please have permit ready". That's really all there is to it, it's common sense.

Unfortunately a lot of bad habits tend to creep up on some people. First of all there is the notorious auto-translate phrase "do you need it?" This phrase is entirely too overused in FFXI and frankly I can only picture a few instances where you'd sincerely need to use it. Maybe if you wanted to ask a foreign player if they need a certain drop in the loot pool. But somehow this phrase has become almost an institutionalized part of shout info. And without justification.

A typical example would be like: "Windurst mission 8, [do you need it?] @4". It adds nothing whatsoever to your information. Think about it. Isn't it already implied in my responding that I would need the mission? Why would anyone respond if they were not interested in joining you? It's like some bad rhetorical question randomly inserted out of no where. Imagine if someone were to shout: "ROZ mission 10, [Does this tunic make me look fat?] @5, need tank". That's not far off from using "[do you need it]". Variations of this same idea comes in the form of "[Can I have it?]", and [Do you have it?]. Then there's always the double-whammy of: "[Do you have it?] [Can I have it?]".

Not far off from this phenomenon is the redundancy of specifying whom to send a tell to join the party. For example:

Pukequeefa : Soboro run, [looking for members] @5, /tell Pukequeefa

Most of us have done this and in fact it's so common many people just add it on out of pure instinct without thinking. Now maybe Pukequeefa has an uber fine Soboro run brewing. But the problem is it simply adds no info to your shout. Anyone capable of running a complicated computer game will understand the implication that you would have to send Pukequeefa a tell in order to join up. Maybe they think that their request is so complex and unnavigable it blows the minds of the average peon. In which case reminding the stupefied creatures how they communicate might be required.

There is however a legit function for the "/tell X" comment. If you are shouting for your party but you are not the organizer of the event then it serves an actual purpose to point anyone interested to them instead. For example, if the organizer is shouting to find members in Whitegate and you offer to shout in Lower Jeuno to cover more area. Unless this is the case ditch that "/tell" comment for the better.

These are just a few specific habits that I see on a daily basis and wanted to finally and explicitly point out. I know there are many other varieties but that'll do for now. Just remember to stick to providing info while resisting using the auto-translator as a lazy-phrase machine and you're way ahead.