Terminology

[Kadano]

Because there is no official guide that names all the obscure phenomenons we have in Melee, many community-named terms have been established. Sometimes, there are conflicting terms that I haven’t found a clear definition for yet. So far, these have been:

1. Edge vs. ledge. What is the difference between these? My guess is that the edge is just the end of any platform you can edge-cancel with and that the ledge is what you can hang on to. Is this correct?

2. Run-canceling vs. dash-canceling. I’ve read posts, most of them written by Bones, that explain why the the former is superior. Has this newer term found widespread acceptance yet or do most people still say dash-canceling?

3. -canceling. I hate expressions formed with this because they give so little information what it means. For example, run-canceling is usually understood as pressing down during the run animation to stop. The -canceling part implies that something is done to quickly cancel the run. Now the problem I have with this is that jumping out of a run could also be referred to as run-canceling because the run animation also ends.
I’d prefer terms like jumpsquat-grab over JC grab and run-crouch over run-canceling / dash-canceling. (or kneebend-catch and run-squat, but I guess I’m the only one who likes debug mode’s terms that much)
I don’t have a question for this point, I just want to voice my opinion to see whether others feel this way too.

 

[failninja21]

yea i've always sorta had a problem with -canceling as well, especially with how in jump-cancelled grabs, the jump is cancelled into a grab, but in jump-cancelled shines the shine is cancelled into a jump lol. and yea i've also been wondering about edge vs ledge as well

 

[Bones0]

I have always made it a point to specify edges as anything you can edge-cancel on while ledges are the actual thing you grab. It'd be nice if this became standardized because it'd really help discussions by saying "he's on the edge" as opposed to "on the ledge" which are two drastically different things (the former being standing on the edge of the stage and the latter being hanging on the ledge). The only problem is Sakurai trolled us by calling holding the ledge "Edgehogging".

I've seen at least a couple people say run cancelling.

I agree that the cancelling is out of control, but Melee has too many cancels for it to not get confusing. lol It really just comes down to some mechanics cancelling multiple character states while some mechanics can only be cancelled one way. So for instance, you can say "jump-cancelled", but there's multiple things you could be jump cancelling. You can cancel shines by jumping, you can usmash out of a run by jumping, you can grab out of a run by jumping, etc. We could call all of those techniques "shine-cancelling", "jumpsquat-usmash", and "jumpsquat-grab", but it's easier for most people to just understand all actions interrupted or preceded by jumps as "jump cancels".

So in the end, we will just have to agree it's unfortunate and try to keep the terms we do have as standardized and non-misleading as possible.

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