Proposal Does "SPD" mean Speed or Special Defense?

Zarel

Zarel

Not a Yuyuko fan
is a Site Content Manageris a Battle Simulator Administratoris a Top Programmeris a Pokemon Researcheris an Administrator
Creator of PS
Hi, did you know that most sites not directly downstream of Smogon use "Spd" to mean "speed"?

Anyway this causes confusion more than never, and one thing we could do to prevent that would be to switch our abbreviations from:

HP / Atk / Def / SpA / SpD / Spe

to

HP / Atk / Def / SAtk / SDef / Spe

(Is this competitive policy? Man I don't know, I just don't think this needs to be hidden in IS.)

When I wrote Showdown way back in 2011, I used SpA/SpD/Spe because that's what Smogon used. But it comes up sometimes that when one of our commands gets told "spd" they can only guess if that's Speed or Special Defense. I've seen some people talking about it on other sites be confused about it sometimes, too.

Shaymin Sky said:
the collective of not just p.s but general pokemon community uses spdef or sdef (altho spdef is more common), and spd doesn't work since that can be confused for speed and ive never seen sde ever in my life
Click to expand...

Anyway, when I mentioned it in the development channels I got a mixed reaction. I don't have too much of a horse in this race, but Showdown will switch if Smogon switches too. Do any of you have strong opinions on this? This could be your chance to make something happen!

edit: there's some confusion in this thread so I'm going to quote my clarification:

While I agree that when all six stats are in front of you, or when you are looking at something directly generated by Showdown or Smogdex (and thus capitalized correctly), this is not a problem.

The thing is, of course, how we spell things affect how people talk about them, and so if we spell it "SpD" and then someone on Reddit says "spd" and someone else reads it and thinks "speed", that can cause downstream confusion which we could prevent by just never spelling it "SpD" in the first place.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
i am incredibly showdown pilled, and thus when i read "spd" i read it as special defense, but that tends to happen when casuals mean it as speed. i personally short it as spdf and i think ive even heard people read that out loud so i think it we were to change it, id change it to spdf, but ive never seen anyone been confused by the way it is right now, because if you read SpD chances are you are reading Spe just beside it
 
Honestly, I think most people recognize SpD as Special Defense, especially when it's listed in the usual order—HP / Atk / Def / SpA / SpD / Spe. As long as that order’s kept, it’s pretty clear what’s meant and I don’t think it causes much confusion.


Unless you're playing something like Nature Swap or Flipped, people can usually tell which stat is which just from context. So personally, I think keeping the standard order matters more than changing the abbreviations.
:sphearical:
 
from an aesthetic perspective, i think "SAtk and SDef" look kind of ugly, the capital letters next to each other just does not mesh for me. to me, SpA is a clean and efficient way of writing special attack. the issue with special defense is that there isn't really a nice way of abbreviating it outside of SpD.

especially with the clear capitalization, SpD and Spe are pretty clearly delineated IMO, especially when juxtaposed in the actual teambuilder. Also, process of elimination: Spe can't be representing special attack or special defense to it has to be speed. i could understand how there would be times when it's a hassle to have to communicate, but there are plenty of alternatives to the abbreviated forms that could be used in an instance of talking to a new player or someone used to a different site.

i am rly curious: how this would impact PS and stuff like pokepaste, also how would it be rolled out, would old importables/pokepastes still be compatable, and importables— basically every RMT posted up to this point would have to fix its importable if applicable— should this be implimented? sure it may be a touch nicer in niche scenarios, but is it really worth having to rework every importable and pokepaste just for slightly more clarity?
 
While I agree that when all six stats are in front of you, or when you are looking at something directly generated by Showdown or Smogdex (and thus capitalized correctly), this is not a problem.

The thing is, of course, how we spell things affect how people talk about them, and so if we spell it "SpD" and then someone on Reddit says "spd" and someone else reads it and thinks "speed", that can cause downstream confusion which we could prevent by just never spelling it "SpD" in the first place.

Old importables would still work with PS. I actually was looking at the stat parsing script, currently "spd", "SPD", "SpD", and "spD" will all be interpreted as "Special Defense", but "Spd" will be interpreted as "Speed". That's what made me think about posting this thread in the first place.
 
Stat screens in the games use "Sp. Def" or "Sp.Def" depending on the game, Smogon just uses a slightly more shortened version, and SpD's capitalization should make it clear that its multiple words so it cant be speed. Sp. Atk was also mentioned as a change in the op, its also supported by the stat screens in games and can't be confused with anything else, definitely should not be changed. The amount of people I've seen confused is also pretty low, and considering that im active enough in smogcord to be sdc (smogcord regularly has people who are completely new to competitive, dont even know what smogon is), that should be pretty good evidence that its not that confusing to most people.

This is a pretty subjective argument but Satk and Sdef look bad. If we really have to change SpD, please make it SpDef.

1000032383.png
 
This doesn’t seem like a big deal tbh, its already colloquialized into smogon framework and its caught on. I don’t think there needs to be uniformity with reddit. Plus it makes sense this way anyway since the special stats are two words and the other stats are one. What we have now works, I don’t think it should change.
 
if we are trying to shorten spdef to 3 letters, I think with the capitilization of SpD that should help make it as obvious as possible. Another note tho and this is more of a OCD thing but SpD looks ugly even though it does serve its purpose well. If possible a period between p and D makes it look better (Sp.D) but if not the best abbreviation for 3 letters is SpD with this way of capitilization
 
Last edited:
If the seen issues are regarding SpDef I don’t think SpA needs to be affected by changes. The uniformity is a nice aim, but SpA >>>>> any other version of it, mostly because shrinking down Attack always takes either 3 characters or only the A, and in my opinion special appreciates the p a lot in any shortenings. Sp is basically one sound; I don’t think of special as a word that starts with s, I think of it as one that starts with sp. And if 4 is the limit, options like SpAt or SpAk are rough. Lowk SpAk actually looked worse in my head, that could be fine if uniformity were desired.

Uniformity with my proposal for SpDef which is to just lose the e instead of the p. SpDf. Unless people think it stands for “SpeeD fast” it provides all the clarity needed, and as noted above when people are talking about special defence on vc they say SpDef anyway, though quickly and in a lot of accents it already sounds more like SpDf. Or well, Spuduf but we can’t make that the stat’s new name. If we changed to SDef people would start saying “esdef” and I would hate that.

Adding a full stop in the middle I liked as a concept on instinct, the issue with it would be if the terms eventually get normalised then people are gonna have to switch to punctuation keyboard when texting about SpAtk and that’s unnecessary labour. And I just kept trying to do it and it came out with Sp./ consistently, granted that’s a skill issue. If the intention is to change the terms in common usage too, then SpDf is the solution that maintains the greatest existing muscle memory though that’s a minor benefit lol.
 
Honestly, keep it as-is. “Spuh-Def” (SpD) and “Spuh-tak” (SpA) both look nice and vibe well with the other stats, being three letters long with no punctuation. Also, it’s like the smallest of hurdles to entry, especially when Spe is intuitive.

You could do “HP / Atk / Def / SpAtk / SpDef / Spe”, with “Sp” as a natural add-on that means “special”. This also just used in the builder. And, I personally think, if we’re going to change it, this would be the best and most reasonable way to do it.

Either way, there should be no punctuation, as that looks ugly—and even more so by non-punctuated abbreviations. (Atk vs S.Atk / Sp.Atk / Sp.A) That just gives it a weird disjointedness or, if you remember Biology, “non-disjunction vibes”. Additionally, capital letters shouldn’t be side by side, as “SAtk / SDef” look wonky and don’t conjure up their name as well as “SpA / SpD” do or as “SpAtk / SpDef” would, due to many languages using “sp” as a single idea that’s an entirely separate entity from “s” and “p”.

The original version having good aesthetics (all stats be three letters long, barring HP for obvious reasons) and being fairly intuitive (easy to pick up on even if you were first confused) are good enough causes not to change them. So, keep it as-is but if there’s going to be change go for “SpAtk / SpDef / Spe”.
 
Ooh! A thread about writing aesthetics!

I'm in the camp of either keeping it as-is or going with POM's suggestion of “HP / Atk / Def / SpAtk / SpDef / Spe.” I agree insofar as adding punctuation seems like a nonstarter personally re: aesthetic purposes / disjointedness. I additionally want to echo the sentiment that leaving it as-is with the capitalized D already acts as a check against ambiguity between Special Defense and Speed.

Celever said:
If the seen issues are regarding SpDef I don’t think SpA needs to be affected by changes.
Click to expand...
I disagree with this. (Sorry Celever lol) I think uniformity re: the Special stats is something we should really endeavor to keep. Having a bigger difference between Attack and Defense is fine, since they are two separate, full words and the abbreviations are distinct enough that they cannot reasonably be confused. However, treating the abbreviation of the word "Special" differently between Special Attack and Special Defense would actually cause more confusion, in my mind. It's a shared modifier for both stats—so why would we want to modify that common word differently?

The worst-case scenario here, in my mind, is that a new user looks at a few analyses / threads and initially mixes the two up. They are then corrected, either by inference or just explicitly, and operate under our stylistic conventions going forward. And I (personally) don't think that such a scenario merits an overhaul to this degree.

As an aside, we would have to do a mass find+replace on every existing analysis that mentions Special Defense EVs/IVs if we made this change. Not saying that that should be a dispositive factor in the determination here since it could be an easy change, but it's worth noting nonetheless.
 
Another thing is that "Spe" as a shorthand for Speed is fairly intuitive and, alongside the context in which you use SpD (saying a Pokemon like Clodsire is SpD invested for example), can be used to extrapolate the meaning of SpD by extension. Similarly, you can extrapolate the meaning of SpD with a capitalized D. I think if we lean into case and context specifically it becomes clearer even if Special Defense is written by itself.
 
Seeing "Spd" used conversationally out in the wild reminds me of those order of operations trick problems that get multiple answers out of intentionally ambiguous use of parenthetical multiplication or misused division signs. It's just fundamentally poor communication and should never be standardized in any serious or official context.

Since there isn't an alternate way to abbreviate Speed without ending up on this ambiguity, a program reading "spd" should default to assuming Special Defense to account for the potential lack of case sensitivity in their intent, as SpD is generally seen as a perfectly fine unambiguous way to refer to Special Defense. Spe over Spd will always be the "correct" way to properly refer to the Speed stat without running into the ambiguous communication issue, standards that run otherwise are just being unserious. (I do think that the practicality merits of interpreting only the "Spd" capitalization as Speed are technically valid and does seem like it aligns with the most "common" reading of each capitalization possibility, though I would still complain to the redditors who are doing this in their pastes and not properly disambiguating their stats.)

HP / Atk / Def / SpA / SpD / Spe is a perfectly clear, consistent, and aesthetically uniform standard. SAtk and SDef aren't stats, they're mental illness.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top